Tricks and Treats! Happy Halloween!

The final installment of "Workplace Horror Stories" for October- and it is all you want for Halloween!! Want spooky? Check. Costumes? Check! Psychos? Yup.  Blood and gore and so much more? Yes, yes, yes.

This episode is packed from start to finish with the best submissions from our listeners and the goriest the web has to offer, delivered with the laughter we need in today's world.  Your hosts are joined by producer T-Bone for an hour-plus good time!

Trigger warning: Some of the stories in this episode graphically detail gory workplace accidents, attempted suicides, and workplace violence.  No deaths are included in this episode.

Spotify Playlist- The soundtrack to this special episode!
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Visit our blog for more insights, fun links, and a chance to mouth off at us!

Transcript

0:02

Um, the Toxic Tea Room podcast is for entertainment purposes only. I mean, neither the Toxic Tea Room nor its parent, that one. Booth Productions, LLC, is responsible for the statements or opinions of its guests submissions content derived from publicly available sources. Even if you're just as confused and frightened as I am. I mean, I just don't understand. But this podcast and its parent company are not responsible for any actions due to any content produced in this podcast either. Listeners are encouraged. Heck, I encourage you, um, to FET any recommendations with certified professional personnel, not just those dressed up as certified for Halloween. Okay, for more information on our disclaimer, I mean, as well as to see some amazing trick or treat specials, which clearly I didn't make, please visit www.toxictroom.com. Be safe. I'm, um, stella. And I'm Roberta. Welcome to the toxic tea room. Halloween special. I feel obligated to issue a trigger warning for our listeners for this episode, and it wasn't anything to do with your Disclaimer, Stella. I just feel obligated to issue that wasn't me talking. I'm sorry. You're right. I don't know what demon that was. Um, that was Karen. That was Karen the proverbial, not the listener who wrote in Karen the proverbial. Karen. I got you. I'll go with um, but in all seriousness, we'll just run with fine. Okay. This is the final installment of our workplace Horse episodes. Happy Halloween. And this episode is actually scheduled to go live on Halloween, which is perfect, as this particular episode features all sorts of tricks and treats, including a, uh, return guest by our direct invitation, our producer, T Bone. Hi, T Bone. Hey, T Bone. Hey, ladies. Hey, ladies. Nice to have you back. Get funky. Get ready, because we have psychos and gore and spooky things and all the. Good stuff just in time for Halloween. But no stories about witches, because your hosts are already here. Brooms are parked at the front. Get ready. So we have gleaned the best of the Internet and your submissions for today. And I want to start us off with something that we all identify as part of Halloween costume. So here's the first story coming to you live. I have a very fun loving office for Halloween. Last year. I dressed as Dark Vader. I'm sorry, what? And planned to as who did you dress as? Darth Vader. And planned to enter my meeting with his theme music playing. So I went to our meeting room, threw open the door and marched in with this loud dramatic music m only to realize my meeting had been moved to another room and another department of very serious people I didn't know were staring at me like I was. At uh know. If he dressed up legitimately as Darth Vader, no one knows who it is. Right, exactly. He's got that big helmet on. And I'm sorry, but that's I think that's hysterical. I can see it, like, blasting up I doubt he carried around, uh, an 80s old school boombox with him. But even if it was from his phone, I think that is classic. I think that's hysterical. So that's a nice tame start to today. And everyone's probably like, that's a waste of a trigger warning. Oh, hang on, folks. You should know us by now. We're not even close. This warm. Now that is what we call the proverbial. Just put your foot in the water. It's okay. Just come on a little. Your toe. Not even your foot. The tiniest little sliver of toe. Just to touch it and see what it is. It's only going to get better. All right, well, what would this time of year be without a little something psychotic, not psychopathic. Go back and listen to our inaugural episode if you want to better understand the difference, but this one is straight psychopathic. Can't wait. Was once asked to investigate a sexual harassment situation where three different women were coming on to a male coworker throughout their shift. Wow. I took down the details, got the names. Easy peasy investigation. So I thought a week later, nobody by these descriptions or names had ever worked for the company. So I decided to talk to the gentleman again. After a lengthy conversation where things didn't quite stack up, I asked him how these women communicated with him. I shit you not, with a straight face. He looks me in the eye and replies telepathically like I'm some kind of idiot. I had never sent an employee for a psychological evaluation up until that point, and I hope to never do so again. So, yeah, I was asked by a Delusional Schizophrenic to conduct a sex harassment investigation to the voices in his head. Let's pause real quick. Imagine and mental illness is a real thing. And while this is amusing because the situation is amusing, if you're that HR representative, you're like, they don't pay me enough to do this. Honest to God, they just don't pay me enough. But if you think about what it's like to be this human being and hearing these voices and some of them are women and he has a description for them and he has names for them, and they are continually hitting on him all day in his head, that would literally be maddening. Now there are some guys in our audience to be like, I don't understand the problem here, but that's because some of those people also need at least imaginary women interested, I guess. But I just think this would be a personal nightmare. Are you okay, T Bone? You can laugh. Uh, are you okay? Imaginary women. I love that. That's funny. So they basically hired Joaquin Phoenix is what you're saying, right? Oh, dang. Anybody see the Joker? But you realize the Joker is a character, right? Like Joaquin Phoenix is not schizophrenic. He's just a really talented actor. I'm hoping we don't get sued. Stella, please get us into a different direction. I think we just need to like the hell with the waiting in. Let's just jump in. Let's just jump into some shit. Let's go. I'm tired of this. Let's just do it. Okay? Because although that one was certainly cray cray, um, I think it's time for something a little spookier. Here it goes. I worked at a small company, approximately 50 people, who hired a new receptionist. I'll call her Jen. She was nice enough, though. The more I talked to her, the more I caught her in little lies about her life, family. I thought it was I thought it was weird, but just a quirk, nothing major. One day we get an email from HR that sadly, Jen's husband had passed away and there was a collection for flowers, et cetera. Everyone felt terrible. She was only in her mid 30s, no kids, and had talked fondly of this guy. I'll call him Frank. She got two weeks off for Bereavement and came back as shaken up as anyone who just lost their spouse would be. One day I had to cover the reception area while Jen took a break. Imagine my surprise when I get a call asking for her from her husband. No. I asked who it was and made him repeat it. And he repeated, this is Frank, this. Is a demon imitating Frank calling from here. I wasn't sure if it was a prank or a damn ghost, but I freaked out and didn't tell anyone from. Jen comes back to her desk from lunch and it's like, were there any calls? None. It was quiet. Okay. Yeah. When I was finally ready to quit that job, my coworkers took me out for a goodbye party. I got drunk and mentioned the story to the HR lady, thinking I was going to shock her with my secret knowledge. Oh, yeah. HR lady says, we know she wanted two more weeks of vacation, which she got as Bereavement, but there's nothing we can do about it because she knows the company president is sleeping with half of the admins and threatened to block. Did not see that last line coming. That's like a tele novella. Okay, HR lady's like, yeah, we know her husband didn't really die, which I'm like, but doesn't that piss you off? Because everybody put their own money for a collection. I'm sure she was comforted. I'm sure there was all of that emotional investment. The HR lady is like, yeah, we know that would have already been enough to throw me for a loop. But there's nothing they can do about it because the president's sleeping with half the admins. Now there's 50 people in how many. Admins do you need for 50 people? Exactly how big was my last organization? I think if I counted the offshore folks that I have close to 50 people. I didn't have an admin. This company has 50 people and there's multiple admins. Uh, okay. Am I naive if I think maybe sleeping literally means sleeping. Maybe they have those nap pods like some of the Silicon Valley companies do. I like to cuddle. I'm not going to do anything else, but maybe, um. Spoon me. What if it's that? How cool would that be? Like if someone he's sleeping with half the admins oh, my God. And then you find out no, literally, uh, he takes a nap. Our president takes a nap every day and spoons with a different administrative assistant. Half of them have agreed to this nap time because they also would like a nap. I mean, that could be actually quite sweet. Maybe we're reading. Maybe we're just dark. Where's the president? Oh, he's in he's in the spoon room. He's just spooning. I did not see that twist coming. If that company tried to list a job with Hire My Mom unless it was true spooning and it was voluntary, I bet those pros would have seen those red flags waving like semaphore. Hire My Mom has served as an elite matchmaker for great companies that need to secure the right talent since 1997. Which, folks, that is the Gen Z birth year, okay? That's how long they've been around. A whole last generation has come into the workforce, and they're here to get them matched up with Hire My Mom, you reduce the toxicity and increase your success. Visit Hiremymom.com today to view their online courses, see their open job listings, or list your own use code toxic tea room at checkout to get 15% off job listings. Get the talent you need right now. Right now. Yeah. The folks that hire My Mom are great. They really care about the right placement for both prospective employee and the employee. Uh, they really do. And I'm certain that they've been involved in the hiring for this next story. Or had they been involved rather, we probably would have seen a happier ending. Now, this is a submission, and it's a long one. It's like several stories. I've given this one a nickname of The Odyssey. Are we ready? You're not ready? Uh, you're not ready? You think you're ready, listeners? You think you're ready? You're not ready? Okay, here we go. I used to work in tech retail for seven years. In my second month, I was paired with a customer looking for a storage solution for her massive collection of files. As I was trying to create a good buying experience, she emotionally dumped on me the importance of having these files be future proof she was divorcing her husband and trying to keep their daughter safe. I expressed how sorry I was for her situation and that I was happy to help make her life a little easier. Her dumping continued. She confided that she caught her husband and his mother in the bathtub when she came home early from work. Hang on, I have to read this one more time to make sure I read this correctly, she confided that she caught her husband and his mother in the bathtub when she came home early from work. Uh, her husband and his mother were in the bathtub. She caught her husband relationship and his mother in the bathtub. Okay. I mean, maybe she was giving her son a bath. He's a whole ass married man at this point. That's so gross. Oh, my God. Um, we'll keep reading. She said the house was way too quiet. That's even creepier. And they had their baby daughter by this time, and there was no peep from her. I know my alarm bells would be ringing as a parent. And as if that wasn't enough, that same night she said she woke up. I read ahead. Okay, hang on. Um, you ever have one of those moments of do you continue to read this? And considering the stuff we've read already and our Halloween specials, what I'm about to say for the fact that I'm pausing should give you an idea, but we've been authentic with everything this m month. We've said this is, uh, a respite. We're going to go back to our normal enlisting empowering format in November, where we're very thankful these are workplace horror stories. And if a customer told me the following thing, I would call it a horror story. So I think we're just going to go with it. Guys. If anybody has this on speaker at work, now is the time to either pause this, put on headphones, or maybe just leave this for the ride home. Um. Disgusting. As if that wasn't enough, that same night she said she woke up from a dead sleep to her Norman Bates ass husband thrusting his penis into her foot. Uh, into her foot. Shut up. We're not done with this. Um shut up. Just stop. This is ridiculous. T bone. We're not thrusting his penis into her foot and ejaculating, all over it. That's, uh, the weirdest thing. Can you imagine being an employee? You're here for two months. Uh, this woman comes in, and you're just trying to set up the cloud for her, man. You're not her therapist. And she just unloads all of this. Literally. Uh, unloads? I wasn't even thinking that. Oh, my God. Okay, but there's more. Here we go. Okay. When I became a repair technician, I can't tell you how many men came in to get their devices repaired that didn't clear their devices of any and all pornography beforehand. Yes, their significant others have been present and give hell a stink eye almost every time. Those men were lucky they were in public. Well, they were in public till they got in the car, lady. Speaking of while transferring information from one hard drive to another for a customer, I had to call the cops because of the massive collection of child pornography. The computer was collected via warrant the next day, and I assumed the customer was arrested. That's disgusting. That's so disgusting. Um, arrest all of those people. On a more sad note, I helped a customer utilize all of the parental controls on her phone after her autistic 16 year old daughter was lured by an older man she met online. Okay, that's terrifying. If we're going to talk spooky and terrifying and frightening, that definitely hits the bill. She dropped her daughter off at school like usual, and within the hour, she got a call saying her daughter was absent. I would be beside myself. After all day of searching, her daughter was able to escape the situation and seek refuge at a nearby restaurant, where

she was able to call her mother at 05: 19:21

00 p.m. That evening. Unfortunately, the worst happened, so I pulled out all the stops to make sure that phone was almost useless. For her own safety, I hope she's doing better and living her best life. Can we huh? Pause for a second? Okay. And believe me, I am extremely empathetic to the story, but this poor lady who is submitting these things we don't need to know all the details. I'm just trying to do repair on your phone, dude. I know, right? Can you imagine? Now, in this particular case, I, uh, think there's something, though, when people are helping you, whether it's customer service sometimes, or especially if it's face to face and you're trying to do something like this. I don't know, maybe there's, like, okay, you're here to help me, and I can't really tell most people in my life all of this. Yeah, that's true. And you're kind of like an interested stranger. I am not going to see you at Thanksgiving. I'm not going to have to run into you at church, necessarily. And I can just tell you all of these things because I need to tell somebody. Maybe that's what's going on. But, yeah, this poor person, that's probably but we're not done. I said odyssey. Okay? Unfortunately, there's more. Um, meanwhile, back in scumbag land, there was a customer who was notorious for trying to utilize our collective knowledge to commit white collar crimes, as well as other just distasteful and dastardly shit. My first experience was a training session where he was clearly stealing photos off the Internet and using them to promote his product. This web suit was an absolutely a slap chop job and clearly a scam. I shut that shit down by explaining that what he's doing has nothing to do with education on how to use the device or software we support, so I wouldn't be much help at all. He then switched over to a dating profile. He was making you do this in the store? Dude, I mean, do people not have shame, though? Like, it's one thing you were victimized. You were victimized, and you're asking for help to prevent another victimization, such as the first thing with the foot fucker. What do you want me to call him? Toe Jam. Toe Jam. Mr. Toe jam. Okay. Uh, the nicer part of that story was the foot part. Uh, can we just remember that the most pleasant part of that first story was the foot? He was in the tub with his mother. Okay? So can we just remember, uh, but when you are literally in there, I'm going to do some white collar crime, and now I'm going to pull up a dating profile in the store and ask some questions about uploading photos to it. All I did was show him what the upload symbol looked like, and he began uploading them to the profile. Oh, my God. Oh. Did I mention his wife was actively dying of cancer? No, you didn't mention that. This guy also scammed the elderly out of credit card numbers. He once tried to pay for a repair with a large binder filled with images of credit cards. Of course, none of them had his name, and he had to use his own money for the repair that day. I'm hoping the FBI was called that day for that crime as well. Yes. Oh, my God. People, hold on to your cards. That's all I got to say. I had a training session with a man in his 60s once where he wanted to learn the basics of the new computer he purchased the previous week. He took a shine to me and slipped me a scrap of paper with his phone number. I politely refuse and inform him that I'm taken and tried to be lighthearted about it so as to not make him feel uncomfortable. He kept persisting. What is that? Wasn't that a, uh, thing in Congress? Yet she persisted. Yet he persisted. And to really drive the message home that I was in no way, shape, or form interested in a romantic relationship, I refused more firmly and ripped the scrap of paper in front of him savage and didn't give the creep a second thought. Unfortunately, I came down with a wicked flu, and I was out the next four days. My coworker informed me upon my return that the creep showed up all four days I was gone, asking for me. I went about business as usual, getting ready to teach a group class, and he showed up out of nowhere and made a beeline toward me. We had a brief conversation, and my manager came and ushered him away. After I told him about what happened while I was gone, I never saw him again, but I now never leave the house without something to defend myself. Last story for now. Oh, my God. We have a listener that's going to be keeping us rolling here. I was doing a photo software training session with this quote, unquote gentleman. I soon found out he and his wife had a file share of photos of just his testicles balls. Uh, that's false. That's bald. I told him this was inappropriate, and we need to work on photos that are more PG. The next session, I had with him the following week. Everything seemed fine until the end of the session, where he pulls up a picture of himself naked as a baby and says, oh, and there's my penis, and walks out of the store. That was a lot. Aren't they called exhibitionists? I don't know. I mean, I will just tell you that when you got to post, if you got to take that many pictures of your ugly bits, is it just to remind yourself that they're there? Like, why take pictures of yourself if they look the same in one picture and you're happy with that picture that you save it? Why multiple pictures? Can't you just use the one over and over? I don't know what he's using it for. I don't. No. Nobody wants to see your wevos. Nobody wants to see your weavos and nobody cares. Nobody cares. Uh, T Bone, I have a question for you. Hang on. As our representative man here, OK? Because you're here. Yeah, because we don't know we're not men. But I have a question. Do men think women like those pictures of their twig and berries? Do they think we like that? You don't think DPS are a thing. I know, but do you think women actually enjoy receiving D picks? I don't know if they uh can. I give an answer on behalf of all women? I think the man just gets, uh, a kick out of sending, and I. Think that's where it really I have to let all of our male listeners know. If you've never done it, good for you. Don't. If you have done it and you think that turns a woman on, you're wrong. You're 100% wrong. We don't like any of it. It's not the most attractive organ. Show us your eyes. Give us a close up of your eyes. You got some good chest muscles. We'll take that. But nobody likes it. And this guy apparently had just and then as a little baby pointing at it, that's my penis. Congratulations, sir. Congratulations. You're male and you have a penis. Um stella, please get us away from that. Yeah, okay. But before we get to our next story, I Want To share A Story from Escatenna. Escatenna was formed by passionate individuals that wanted to deliver real value real fast. From standing up a new business unit to architecting a business development strategy to forensic logistics, escatenna has proven that uncommon results are unleashed when you use escatena as your strategic partner. Learn how Escategena can help you succeed today@escategenna.net. Now that the bills have been paid, I would like to move on m to a different sort of horror story. Oh, Lord. This one is actual horror. So listen. Yeah, so if you've been listening cavalierly up until this point, right? I had a coworker once become so in love with our boss that he tried to sneak into our house. Oh, no. Absolutely not. Get the. This sounds like a ah, freaking movie. My God. They never dated or anything, but he knew where she lived and tried to break in. Wow. Luckily, she got an alarm system and he was deterred. He later tried to end his life. Unsuccessfully what the hell? And ended up disfiguring. I saw him at a blood drive. Another coworker was hosting. After all of this, he looked horrible. And I'm sure he was only there in hopes that my boss would be there. That's tragic. Wow. Yikes. Uh, that's terrifying. I hate stalker stories. I mean, stalkers are terrifying. And then m, he tries to commit suicide. Oh, my God. That's just the worst. Uh, before you go into your next story, Stell, can I just share a little stalker story and why I hate stalkers? And I can't say for sure this is a stalker. So, there was a weird thing that happened at my house a few weeks ago. Oh, yeah. I went out to get the mail, and I have a rather long driveway. It's about half a block long because I live on a hill. It's long. It's a long driveway. So as I walk out of my house to go get my mail, i, um, see a car parked on and I live in a small subdivision, and I'm towards the front of the subdivision, so there's not a lot of cars just parked there, typically, or anywhere in the subdivision. Um, but there was a car parked kind of between my mailbox and my next door neighbor's mailbox. So I didn't think anything of it. I'm like, whatever. And as I get close to my mailbox to retrieve my mail, the car suddenly engages in drive and speeds off burning rubber left tire tracks on the curb, which was weird. And then again, as I mentioned, I'm right towards the front of my subdivision. So at ah, the main road, which is still well within, eyeshot peeled out. Crazy. And I'm watching this in utter fascination because I can't see any cause for it. And it was unsettling because while I did not go out to confront the car, because, again, I didn't even care, and it had really dark windows. So from where my viewpoint was, I couldn't see who was in there. Um, I did, as it peeled away, catch some of the license plate. And it was an out of state plate. I caught enough of it to be able to make some inquiries. Now, they really did scatter really fast. Really fast. Like they clearly wanted to get away from me, which almost makes you wonder, how am I not the target? Now, the interesting thing is I'm sure they felt kind of safe and secure in their out of state plates. And they probably should have thought that in my neighborhood, lots of people have ring cameras, including the neighbor that had full visual of the car. So if you're listening now, why don't you just come and knock and say hi? Like I would have given you guys some coffee. Your passenger didn't have to hold the papers over her head as she was driving past. Like, I know who you guys are. That's just stupid. Stalkers are idiots. Just knock on the door. Knock on the door. Knock on the door. Just come and say hi. That's creepy. And you made a lot of noise. That was unnecessary. God. You know what it is? It's cowardly. I agree with, uh, that and they're like, It's a rental. They won't know who this is. You're stupid. You know how easy that shit was to track? You guys have no idea how simple that was. Two phone calls. Have a good day. Anyway, Stella, I just thought of that because the stalkers let's go to your story. I know. Okay. All right, here's one more. Uh, one Saturday, I offered to work at my then new job, partially because the workload was intense and partly to impress my jerk of a boss. He told me to call him once I got there, but I really had to pee, so I decided to kill two birds and do both at once. But he didn't pick up. I finished my business just as I saw my in the phone screen under my boss's. How did he get there? Apparently, I had FaceTimed him just as I was pulling up my pants, and he got a shot of the goods. Right as he wow. Shot of the goods. We never spoke about it, and I ended up quitting a few months later, but never really could look. Okay, I'm sorry. You sent your new boss, who, by her own admission, is a boss hole, right? Yes. You sent him a picture of your privates on accident, and you never spoke about it out of the good how did you never speak about it? Like, from either party? I'm not just condemning this person. How do you not speak about it? One of them has to say something. Was the boss a jerk because of the I don't know. I don't know. That's awful. You can't blame the boss. No, but I'm like, how does nobody speak about it? That's, uh, usually mortifying, but, I mean, wouldn't you go to your boss and just say, hey, listen, because do you want the perception to be that that was on purpose? Uh, okay. You know where I am right now? I'm alone in the office. Here's a picture of my goods. Do you want that to be the perception? Why wouldn't you simply say the truth? This is really awkward. I really apologize. Obviously, I did not want that to happen at all. But you say nothing and then flip it over to the boss. How do you not say something like, hey, we have to talk about what you sent to me? Hey, I know I told you to call me when you got there, but that's not what I had in mind. I was looking forward to. Getting to know you, but not in the biblical sense. Ma'am. Wow. And then my favorite part before we move on, she ended up quitting a few months later. I would be quitting a few minutes later. Like, what do you mean? What do you mean, a few months? You went a few months knowing that your boss had seen the goods and you didn't say anything about it? You just kind of carried that with you for months. For months. You have no idea what he could have said to anybody, what he could have showed to anybody, and you stayed there for months. Oh, my God. So embarrassing. These stories are getting progressively worse. Like starting off with a full size candy bar when you're trickortreating. And now we're moving down to the bubble gum that loses its flavor after 30 seconds of chewing, but I'm hoping this story does not start people chanting and manifesting. Okay, here we go. Okay. Was working a graveyard shift. Okay, first of all, this starts off appropriately. Was working a graveyard shift at a comcast may have been att at the time call center. There were TVs everywhere with movies on, as there weren't many calls at midnight. Suddenly, all of the TVs, all of them shift to a channel, change down to one of the paid porn channels. So I want to visualize this. It's a call center, probably sparsely staffed, graveyard shift, TVs everywhere. And then simultaneously, they all go to that at once. That's a little weird, but our friend here says, um, my coworkers and I spot this and start chanting, click it. Click get. Uh, the click goes through. Then the do you accept the charges? Message comes up, we chant again, and wonder of wonders, it goes through. Suddenly, there's a full spread on every television in the call center. We spot two managers running full tilt across the cubicles, and shortly afterwards, it got shut off. Apparently, the security guard thought the TV at his station was just for him. Uh, I can imagine all these guys sitting in a little circle. Just click get, click. Oh, my God. It did. It went to the paid poor channel. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Accept the charges. Accept the charges. Like manifesting. That's just so weird. Oh, my God. Boys. Will people at least they weren't doing anything with feet, so I'll let them have that. Um, I can't get past that first story. Sorry. Crazy. Okay, so speaking of things you would rather not have happen, here's our next story. I whistle blue on my CEO, who had allegedly stolen about $2 million from the company, which started an FBI investigation wow. After her failed suicide. That was a big jump. That's a big jump. Uh, we have an investigation. We go right to a failed suicide attempt. Yes. She began stalking employees and threatening to burn their houses down if they so. We go from embezlement wow. To suicide. To stalking and threatening bodily harm. Wow. Yes. A month later, her son was arrested for raping an underage. Yeah, that was a few fun months. He said that was a few fun months. Wow. Ladies and gentlemen, actual story. As if the other ones weren't real. They're all real. I can appreciate the author's dry humor, though. Um, um t Bone and Stella. Were you guys fans of the slasher films when you were in high school? The Friday the 13th and Halloween. And I'll even throw Chucky in there. I mean, were you guys fans of that genre when you were younger? The slash movies? Yeah. What about you, Stell? No, I was not. But I do got to tell you, like, ten years after I watched Freddy Krueger, I had a dream where I was killing Freddy Krueger, but he wouldn't die. And I just kept stabbing him and stabbing him and stabbing, and all this green goo was coming out of he bleeds green. So that terrified terrify me. I don't know. Like, in my dream, I had some rage issues. I don't know. Rage issues. I cannot say I was a full fledged aficionado of the genre either, but it is Halloween, and what would Michael Myers say if we did not include some good old fashioned gore? So I think, um so I think we're going to move into, um, a more gory section of the podcast with our next few submissions. I'll start us off. I work in a restaurant where lots of knives are everybody just so FYI like, lots of knives and sharp things in restaurants. So I work in a restaurant, and one evening, one of the salad tenders cut off the tip of his finger, and it was bad enough that he had to go to the hospital for it. Unfortunately, the salad he was making somehow made it out of the kitchen and onto a table. Uh, no. Shortly after wait, no, wait. This is not going this direction. Wait. Shortly after, a guest complained about something chewy in their salad, uh, thought was a piece of bacon, and they didn't want bacon in their salad, and the salad guy couldn't find the tip of his finger before he left. You ate a finger? You ate a finger? That is disgusting. Can you imagine that? And here's the thing. Somewhere, somebody may be hearing this podcast and go, son of a bitch. That was not bacon in my salad. I'm going to sue those guys. That was not bacon in my salad. Waiter, there's a fly in my soup. Well, at least you didn't get the finger. Okay. Cheesy humor. Cheesy humor. Okay. Love it. Okay, I have to step in here with a palate. All right, I'll let you have it. It's fall time for pumpkin spice and apple cider and all delicious things. Okay, this one is more embarrassing than horrific, but still kind of mortifying. I used to work at a local candy shop where we made our own candy. One of the ingredients was anise anis. Is that how you say anis? I've heard it both ways. A dangerous word. Clearly nouns if you don't know what you're doing. Clearly worse than I tried as hard as I could to figure it out, but inevitably, one day, I pronounced it as anus to a customer. Fortunately, it was an adult who wasn't sensitive about it, and we both lapped it off. Still pretty embarrassing, though. Did you want some anus for your cider? My mom, she makes a Christmas punch and she floats these little anuses in it. Yeah, exactly. But of course, first of all, I'm going to say boo to that story. That boo. We need more gore. It's Halloween, not Thanksgiving. Save those stories for embarrassing Thanksgiving with the anis. Okay? Right. It's Halloween. Okay, so I'm going next. I'm going next. We need more gore. Gory. Nasty stuff. I was the boss, and some guy wasn't paying attention and had his arm on the bar behind him, on the forklift. He was backing up. He backed up right into a container and all but severed his arm. Just a small flap of skin was holding it on. He ran in the building, spurting blood all over, and I ran over and I stopped him, sat him down, and got one of the guys to get me some stuff for an improvised tourniquet. I held his severed arm under mine, and I squeezed the upper arm to slow the flow until I could get the tourniquet on and tight. All the while, I was getting covered in his blood from head to toe. Just think of, like, um what's that movie with the psychotic teenager who actually has she's actually not psychotic. She has significant telekinesis powers. And then they drown her in pig blood at that. What's that? What is it, carrie. Imagine Carrie, only this guy's getting sprayed. Human blood from a guy whose life he's trying to save. This is a horrific sight. I finally got it stopped and sat there trying to keep him calm while the paramedics were on the way. After they took over, I asked the firemen that accompanied them if they could blast me off with the fire hose. They blasted all the blood off, but my clothes were ruined. I sat outside until I dried, and then I went home, showered well, and threw the stained clothes away. I got dressed and went back to work to help the crew clean up the blood and toss the chair he was sitting in in the trash. I could taste his blood the rest of the day. It even got up my nose. I didn't notice until I went home again, but my mustache and goatee were stained from the blood, too, so I had to shave clean. They were able to reattach his arm, but it never worked right again. He went on permanent disability afterwards. Uh, what part of just take the rest of the day off is not. Uh, this is a leader and a hero. Can I just say that? Do you understand? Under the most horrific circumstances, he kept a level head, he saved a man's life. And yeah, I'm sure it looked like a horror scene, because I, uh, can only imagine this in my head, and it's probably ten times worse than what I'm even imagining. But this guy is to keep a level head, save a man's life, go home, say these clothes aren't going to that's not coming out in the wash. Throw it all away, shower himself well, and go back to work so that the crew is not stuck cleaning this up by themselves. That's a leader. My hat off to you, sir. I am giving you a standing ovation. You are incredible, and I'm so sorry you had to go through that, but if there was an emergency, that's the guy I want in my corner. Man, that guy's incredible. Stella, uh, above and beyond. Stella, come on. You got to have a gory story in your pile. You got to. This is not going to be easy. So again, if you need to pause, do not let kids hear this. For the love of God. First of all, if this is the first time that you've got kids stepping away for this podcast, it is marked explicit material. We mark that clearly. So don't let kids hear this. Okay? Just guys, I got to warn you. This is so disgusting. Disgusting. Here comes uh okay, this is why I am not in health. Listen, you are talking this off. This had better be a good one. Oh, this is bad. Okay, I had this guy who was around 650 good starts come into the hospital via, uh, EHS, eh, emergency hospital service. Probably twelve. Thank you. It took twelve people to move him onto a stretch. Big boy. He was coated in rotting God from his behind, groin and thigh from sitting in a recliner for so long. And there were flies buzzing everywhere. What's that? Movie seven? Is that the movie? Oh, my God. My God. That's so disgusting. How long was he in? What does the chair look like? Why does my brain always try to follow that? I don't know. Okay? There was so many maggots and flies covering him that we had to shower him outside of the department. While he lay in the stretcher, we wheeled him into the trauma bay, leaving a trail of brown rot water behind him. My God. Brown rotwater. My God. Bring it. Okay, lucky me. I got assigned the job of placing a folly catheter in no. I had two masks, a gown, and as much other PPE as I could find. The smell was not masked in the slightest. As I tried to fight back my dry heating, I pulled the blanket back that was covering him, uh, in an attempt to grab his penis for cleaning. Prior to catheter, which is the standard protocol, I believe. Uh. Okay. There were still Maggots literally all over his groin and legs, and some were legitimately falling out of his get the. Fuck out of here. I damn near threw up in my mask. I just did that myself. Yeah, I'm right there with you. I remember thinking to myself, OMG. Um, I'm going to be pushing Maggots up into his bladder, but I got to do what I got to do. End result. For all of you wondering, he passed away later that evening. We do not pay our healthcare professionals enough money, Nurse. And I know we have a lot of people from healthcare that listen, uh, you have my utmost respect at all times, but the person who had to do this, I hope you got Nurse of the Year. I hope someone took care of your psychological needs after this. Oh, my God. Stella. How do you go from, uh, anus to this? How do you do? You crazy. Happy Halloween, guys. What do we call this, a trick. Or that's not a treat. I don't think it's a trick, either. That is so disgusting. Oh, God. Oh, gosh. All right, I'm not going to ask you for any more of that, Stella, okay? I, um, promise I have my own. I have my going to. There's there's no insects in mine. Okay? Everyone that knows me knows that I, uh, hate bugs. I hate bugs. I hate them. Unless, like, a ladybug who can hate a ladybug. I love ladybugs praying mantas. No problem. You know why they eat bugs? Any bug that eats a bug is a friend of mine. Except spiders. Spiders are the exception to that rule because spiders are from hell. Spiders are from hell. T bone. And they're from hell t bone. Okay. All right. I once had an internship in construction management, asphalt paving contractor. Several years ago, an inspector who was hard of hearing was out on the job site. He did not realize he was in the way of an asphalt compactor. This is not going to go well. I just know this. No, it isn't. The compactors move really slowly, and their brakes are not built to stop or to abruptly stop, at least not the old ones. Seeing as you could see these things coming with more than enough time to move. Oh, my God. I read ahead. Hang on. Yes. Oh, gosh. Several guys on the equipment tried yelling at him, the inspector, to get out of the way, thinking he would right away. But he didn't hear them because, remember, he's hard of hearing. The guy in the compactor obviously applied the brakes, but the others realized too late that he wasn't getting out of the way. You can imagine what happened next. They said the sounds were unimaginable. I debate that because I'm imagining them right now, and it is not at all pleasant, my people. He didn't make a noise, but his body being crushed did. They had to scrape him off the pavement. The guy and the compactor took an office job after this and now has severe PTSD. I would presume so. Oh, I have PTSD. Wow. Could you? That's like straight out of a horror movie. You know what came into my mind and I'm not making light of the situation because this is horrible, but have you ever taken a plastic water bottle and just kind of twisted it before you threw it away? Yeah. I'm just wondering if that was part of the noise. Kind of like that. I don't know. Oh, Lord. Mhm I'm imagining various offices are all of a sudden got it. EW. After these last two stories, like people just sitting at their desks listening to us on the headphones going, oh, my God. And nobody has any idea what it means. I can just picture that. Uh, shall we continue? Lighter. Let's go. Yeah, let's go. Think it's you. Let's go to our favorite what the. God. All right, so before Quarantine, I worked at a McDonald's. This was from September of 19 to March of 21 day in December, I was mopping the floor. One of my daily jobs. In the corner there are the bathrooms and a hall in the area. I started to mop that hall when an elderly man comes to me and says his wife, who is 86, is in the bathroom. Could I wait a few minutes to mop the floor? I said sure. And since I am a film buff, I thought to myself, 2019-86 is 1933. Oh, she's the same age as King Kong. Um, this guy's a geek. I'm sorry, sir. Yeah, I'm sorry. Thank you for your submission, but I have to call you out. The first thing you think about is, okay, so she's 86. It's 2019. -19. 86. That's 1933. That's when King Kong came out. You are a geekser. You need to get out of the house. Go interact with people. Is that all? Can we just get past that? So there was an old woman in the bathroom. We're good? Okay. Uh so I mopped the boy's bathroom and did a small area of the hall over and over again. She finally walked out, and the man told me that she had made a mess in the room. So who should he report it to? I just said to tell a manager at the counter he does so. And one of m my managers shortly comes to me and asks, would it bother you if you did a job in the girls bathroom? I said, no, not putting two and two together. So now you're together. Now you're a slow geek. I'm sorry. Exactly. You were just there mopping the same square foot of hall over and over, waiting for this poor woman and her husband to come out of the bathroom. He says she made a bit of a mess. Who do we tell? You say one of the managers at the counter. They say, all right. Then the manager comes back and says, would you have a problem cleaning up in the woman's bathroom? And you're like, no, and I didn't put two and two together. You know what, sir? If this is your attempt, sir, with your submission to get the ladies, I'm going to tell you that's not working. And you might actually a depict might work out better for you, sir, than this. Let's keep going. Let's keep going because I know it's coming. I know it's going to be there. She then told me to put the mop bucket in the door so the ladies would know I was in there and to get gloves on and get some wet paper towels. I do all of this and go inside to see the mess. I thought she dropped some toilet paper or something, but no, Miss King Kong crapped all over the toilet seat and a little on the floor too. So for about 20 minutes, I cleaned up old lady crap. Did you drop toilet paper? No. Why would you need to wear gloves to pick up some toilet paper on the floor? Well, I would too, but she seemed, like, awfully disguised. Not very, um no ending. On that note, I refuse. I refuse. Sorry. I'm not going to end on another what the shit? I'm not. So I'm going to do the next story, though. This one, though, is terrifying. So I'm going to give a trigger warning for everybody. Folks, for violence. Um, there is a relatively happy ending underscore relatively less than happy, which is why we chose to include it. Um, but this is a workplace violence story, and I encourage everyone. Um, if that's a trigger for you, go ahead and skip ahead a few minutes. Um, workplace violence is not a laughing matter, and we aren't taking it lightly. This is a Halloween special. This is airing on Halloween. This is why we're choosing to include it if it makes everyone feel better. No one dies in this story. I'll give you that. Spoiler alert. Okay, here we go. Going to keep names and places out of this because I still have an active NDA. That's a great start. Anyways, at the beginning of every summer, we would have a big influx of new hires as students um, I'm sorry. As students were getting out of school and people were generally just looking for work. Anyways, one of our new hires was the burly guy that looked like he was in his 30s or 40s. Dude had a sleeve of tattoos and wore a Confederate flag bandana. And you're saying there weren't signs. Anyways, he comes in on his first day and almost immediately gets on our supervisor for not doing anything. I don't know if this dude was aware that he was chirping at a supervisor. Supervisor ignores this for, like, ten minutes before finally saying, yeah, this is your first day. Do you really want to get a bad rep with your supervisor. The dude keeps spouting off at the soup, all while the soup is telling him to just go home and he can try to come back tomorrow with a better attitude. Eventually, the dude gets all up in the soup's face and pushes him. This is assumably on the first day of the job. This guy's got problems, and he pushes the soup. Soup has had enough at this point and goes in to slug the dude. Dude whips a gun out of the back of his pants and blasts the supervisor right in the stomach. Holy shit. Yeah. That escalated. Really? Everyone flips out and starts running at this point. Of course they do. I immediately left through a window, so I don't know what happened next, but from what I heard, the dude with the gun just kind of stood there in shock, like he didn't know what just happened. Cops came in and surrounded the building and dragged the dude out. Supervisor survived, but had to relearn how to walk. Look, God, I can't stress enough the importance of screening your new hires. You are not going to convince me that this person who started bitching at a supervisor on his first day on the job, uh, do you even know where you're supposed to clock in at that point? Do you even know what your job is at that point? What could you possibly have that you're talking to? Somebody say, hey, you're not doing anything. It is your first day on the job. There had to be some warning signs in a background check or even in an interview that would have told you, maybe not this guy. Maybe not this guy. And how are you walking in armed? Yeah, you carried a weapon into work. Guys, please. For all that is holy HR, where are you in this? Managers? Somebody hired this guy and you could have cost someone their life. They had to relearn to walk. Thank God no one died. But obviously the guy has significant issues. If you're willing to just use deadly force on somebody and you're starting a fight with somebody you don't even know, that's terrifying. And here's the thing. You guys want to be able to sleep tonight? Good luck. Because here's the thing. There are people in your daily lives walking near you as you are boarding a train in the hallways where you work, at your church, at your kids school. You really are trying to freak people. Out at the Starbucks while you get your triple shot mocha, uh, in the cars next to you, uh, in gridlock traffic so you can't even run. There are people there that are just ready to go into something like this, or already did. I don't remember the stat. I wish I could look it up really quick while I'm on this podcast, and perhaps I will while Stella does her story. But it's like all of us will walk or know. I think it's know a murderer, a legit killer of another human being. There's a certain number of those we will know personally in our lives. So if you're in an office right now, if you're in a good old American cube farm, look around, because ODS are somebody you're with. We'Re going to have to give people PTSD. I'm not trying to give you anybody PTSD. I just want people to be aware because have we not heard anything in this? I'm Googling this while you do your next one. Okay? So we're not going to end it on that. Okay. Uh, I worked at a supermarket for six years, and I saw a few interesting things. This time, when I was working nights for a couple of months, I got to know the night team well, generally sound guys, but there were a few I'd keep my distance from. It became apparent to me one morning when I was washing my hands and see something in the corner of my eye. She probably meant saw something, a work shoe which contained human shit. Come on. Uh, after reporting this and there being some investigations into the phantom shitter, it happened again. This time, a colleague of mine discovered it, having unfortunately put his shoe on before realizing. One other occasion, a colleague had finished using the toilet and then realized that there was shit strategically balanced on the hook of the stalled door. Oh, my God. I can't what the shit? Upon this being reported, it was realized that this person could be caught. CCTV. Once the security guard managed to narrow footage down, questioning began. However, nothing came from it, and no one got caught. I know that when I left the job ten months ago, the culprit had neither owned up, uh, nor been caught. Word got out about three people that it could have been, but it just stopped being talked about, and everyone moved on. Whether or not this person left, we will never know. All we know is that a man liked to shit in people's shoes and balance them. That's an epitaph. Here lies George Joe Schmo. He liked to shit and balance them on things. By the way, I did look it up. It's been said that the average person can unknowingly walk past 36 murderers in your lifetime. 36. Everybody looking around the room now, huh? 36. 36. I do get the EDGB sometimes. Yeah, that's a damn murderer. That is your body saying that one right there. That's a murderer right there. And the person who posted this stat says, think about the stranger who you brush shoulders with on the bus, the person standing in front of you in line to grab a coffee. Or the passenger who just sat down next to you on a plane or in your backseat if you're driving as an Uber driver. Or the Uber driver. Oh, my God. Or the receptionist. Or the person who gets in an elevator with you and you've got 20 stories to go. Or the house cleaner I got to wrap. Or the person parked in a car outside your house that says, uhoh, she saw me and sped off. Or the person you married who's banging your foot in the middle of the night. It could be any of those. 36 is a huge ass number, and that's an average. That's an average. But hear me, that's an average. So some people walk just maybe by one or none, and others walk by hundreds. Right? You're all murderers. You're all criminals. That's what the case is right here. That's awful. Good God Almighty. Holy shit. Well, listen, we appreciate our listeners and hope this was fun for all of you. Next month, we will focus on new guests, some friendly faces revisiting us, and m more on being thankful for this season. And I am so thankful, I am so thankful that this is over. And I'm thankful for our listeners. Um, check out our blog@toxicteeroom.com slash blog for episodes, commentary, and fun affiliate links. Don't forget to check out the custom curated spotify playlist to compliment each episode. And as always, check out our socials x, Insta, Facebook, LinkedIn, all of it. Subscribe. And if you like what you hear, or if you like what this? If you heard this episode, I need you to see a psychologist right away. Um, you can support us via the links in the show note patreon, or by visiting one of our curated affiliate links on our blog as well. We appreciate you. Please don't shit in people's shoes. Thank you. Yeah, please. We deal with enough shit. And finally, on a more somber note, we know it's been a rough month for a lot of people around the world. Obviously, we record these episodes in advance, and by the time this airs, I genuinely hope that we have at least gotten some peace. As much fun as we've had with this respite and doing corporate horror stories, workplace horror stories, and all of the gory, nasty and literally shitty things that we've brought in to give everyone a respite, um, from the heaviness of work. None of this was planned around a time where people are actually at war and they're living a real terror. Every single day, we pray for peace and hope that November brings with it if god, I hope it doesn't wait until November, but we hope that there is peace soon. Um, to everyone involved. Uh, be safe out there. And, uh, all treats, no tricks. And don't forget your neighbor's a murderer. Yes. Bye. Bye. Bye, you. Sam.