• LemmyFeed@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Installed pirated versions of Windows on all employee and customer computers. We charged the customer for an os install and just used a cracker to activate it.

  • xkforce@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    My old job stored chemical waste longer than what the law allowed in containers that werent labeled correctly. No one knew for sure what the waste was because the guy that was responsible for that before me would just mix different wastes together. The solvent fridge (just a normal fridge from the 90s against a wall in the prep area out in the open) had about 10 gallons of flammable liquids (old solvents and reagents from the 400 level labs and organic classes) and 3 one liter containers of 15 year old diethyl ether which is almost certainly chock full of organic peroxides. (These are explosive) There was another container of ~100g dinitrophenylhydrazine (DNPH) in the flammables cabinet no one paid any attention to for quite some time. It was a good thing that it never became dry as that would need to be handled by the bomb squad. (Previous guy found an old crusty jar of picric acid (a friction sensitive explosive) that resulted in the bomb squad coming to the lab. That shut down part of that campus until it was dealt with) And then theres a waste container that I found at one of the outlying campuses that according to the label, had nitric acid, ammonia and bleach which is… not great.

    • CoderKat@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Them being mixed feels like the worst part of that.

      Did everyone else just stand by while this guy did this? Or was he fired as soon as it was discovered?

      • xkforce@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        He was the only one working in the prep area. They had no one to replace him (yet) and didn’t look that closely at the state the lab was in. During the winter semester he used up all his vacation and sick time, came back for a couple days so he could get holiday pay and quit.

  • gazby@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    We had a little NAS in the office, tied into AD and everything. It was called “Hollywood”. Its contents was “donated” by the staff lol.

    Edit: Sorry about the acronyms peeps, my bad.

  • dingus@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Daily pouring chemicals that require special disposal just down the sink instead.

    Another one: inadequate ventilation for hazardous, carcinogenic chemicals that you are exposed to for the entiety of your shift every single day

  • KairuByte@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Once had a manager instruct me to block an emergency exit with an extremely large piece of machinery. While the building was still full of customers.

    • kite@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I work for a fire marshal. We get complaints about stuff like this allll the time.

      • KairuByte@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        This was likely worse, the intent was explicitly to block the emergency exit. That was the point of the request.

        • kite@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Oh, trust me, you are not alone. Our 2 biggest offenders are also “highly religious, pious men”, so there’s that, too.

          • KairuByte@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            It was an “extra security” procedure put in place because at the time a gang had been targeting our stores by breaking in through the emergency exit, grabbing expensive electronics, and getting out in under 2 minutes. The machinery was meant to only be in place while the building was empty, with the intent of them opening the door and deciding that it would take too long to maneuver around it and instead just leave.

            • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              They could have just improved the security in their door.

              Probably for less than the cost of a single attack.

              They were almost certainly targeting your stores because it was easy. Probably because they were extremely vulnerable locks. (You’d be surprised how easy it is.)

              • KairuByte@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                I don’t know the logistics behind why they went that route. Eventually they upped the physical security on the electronics they were stealing, and then things just went quiet. 🤷🏻‍♂️

    • Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      I work in entertainment, and have requests to do this all the time. It’s just a fire exit, we won’t need it, we don’t have anywhere else to put these road cases, we talked with the fire marshal and he okayed it, etc…

      Yeah, I guess y’all have never heard of the The Station nightclub, or Cocoanut Grove, or the Kiss club in Brazil, or the Rhythm Club, or… Well, I could go on. All of them caused by some combination of bad planning and blocked exits. I can almost guarantee that every single club, theater, church, auditorium, or banquet room you’ve ever been in has been asked to block/lock/barricade the fire escapes at some point. And only the smart ones have refused.

  • arthurpizza@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I worked at a construction company for only one day. The owner kept on doing lines of coke in the office. He thought he was discreet but he was not.

    • ohlaph@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I worked for a global delivery company years ago. One of the training classes I attended of about 16 people had an instructor that liked to take frequent breaks. His nose was constantly red and he had sooo much energy. It was obvious he was snorting every break. Why do we need theee breaks an hour? I wasn’t complaining, it was an easy class, but it was just hilarious simce the company had a strict no drugs policy. But obviously not for admin/management.

  • popemichael@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 year ago

    I worked for a popular VoIP who violated tons of my rights with my disability. My manager would get nosey, then he’d dock my pay when I took my paid FMLA. They were always harassing me about coming in despite my job being pretty much 100% remote. I got a doctor’s note for it, and I would get harassed daily about if I was coming in

    When I went to HR to complain, the next day my desk was trashed.

    I sued them, but lost on a technicality because my lawyer moved office and they didn’t get a piece of paperwork in time, despite putting in a proper change of address

    So I pretty much got screwed

    • PotentialProblem@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      What’s the story with the paid FMLA? I ended up taking FMLA for my sons birth, only for my employer to decide that I could only use 2 weeks of my 6 weeks PTO saved. Apparently, theres no guarantee of pay during FMLA or even that you should be allowed to use your accrued leave during that time… They sprung this on me the day my kid was born, after several months of planning and getting okays from HR.

      There’s a happy ending though. I threatened to sue them (I’m not sure I would have had a case but I had documentation of them approving the PTO usage). So, they stopped responding to me and paid me for all of my PTO. I put in my notice the day I returned. My immediate manager even approved a week of PTO for my two week notice because of how much he hated the situation. The new job paid more with less stress… wins all around.

      • popemichael@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        I sorta kinda knew that my health would decline at some point as I have a severe degenerative bone disease that causes my bone marrow to turn into tumors.

        So I bet against myself and got a seperate insurance with my job in case I were to get any sort of permanent disability

        When I cashed it in, they knew that they had messed up in not requiring a medical exam, but by then it was too late.

        I paid an extra $100 a month for it, and it earned me 125k-ish in extra salary they had to pay when I was too sick to work.

        • PotentialProblem@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Sounds like your job was a complete disaster! Glad you managed to get out of there and good job getting the extra insurance!

          Hope you’re doing alright and none of your bone marrow has turned into tumors.

          • popemichael@lemmy.sdf.org
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            1 year ago

            I’m in pretty good health, comparatively. I can walk with a cane, and I can sit up… something I won’t ever take for granted. So I’m at least a lot better than what I was.

            I know that if I ever get to the point in which I can work again, betting against myself is always wise thanks to my condition being degenerative.

  • WFH@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I used to work IT at a company that leased electronic stuff to the general public. Oh boy were they shitty. Keep in mind, this is in a Western European country where employees and customers have actual rights.

    There was a general policy of harassment and intimidation. Sexual harassment obviously. The female staff was constantly “ranked”, outfits were loudly commented. By management.

    Sometimes you manager came next to you at 6:25PM. You’ve already been doing free overtime by then but utterly stupid management means sudden, unpredictable and hard deadlines. He would lit up a cigarette in your face and keep you until 10PM. Sometimes the deadline was so short and “important” people had to work until 5AM. For free (well, pizzas). And show up the next morning at 10 (instead of 9, woo).

    Managers kept threatening you to cancel your holidays the day before leaving if you didn’t do this and that. Sometimes people had to connect from their vacations to do stuff because they were “critical” for something.

    Money was a funny thing. We were constantly paid late. Sometimes more than 2 weeks late. Everyone who wasn’t an employee wasn’t paid at all. Not the rent, not the building staff (the toilets were FILTHY), not the contractors who remodeled the floor when we moved in, not the suppliers and especially not the IT contractors. I came in on day and found that I lost my entire team because their employers has never been paid.

    One day, they lost a major investor because they lent money to purchase stuff to lease, not burning it in massive management salaries. As a collateral, the investor left with the customer database. So they were back to square one. So, as a get-new-customers-quick tactic, they created dozens of too-good-to-be-true promotions, like giving out electric scooters for new subscriptions and the like. With of course zero intention of honoring them out, since there was no money.

    I could go on and on. Everyday there was new, shitty, borderline illegal stuff going on.

      • WFH@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Funnily enough, they are. Some tech millionnaire invested in them just after I (and 90% of the IT staff) left.

        We all thought he was going to be another whale that they would bleed dry. But he actually took over and changed a lot of things.

        So, for now, they still exist. I don’t know how or at what cost, but they still exist. I wouldn’t go back there for all the money in the world tho, I’m pretty sure the corporate culture is still toxic af.

  • itsgroundhogdayagain@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    1 guy used a pirated piece of software and added it to a server which was then used to make an image for more servers so that pirated software was then proliferated out onto about half the servers in a Fortune 500 company.

    • RogueBanana@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      Does the installation process not include activation of product? I never worked in infrastructure side of IT so not sure how enterprise softwares work. Surely someone must have noticed it early on right?

  • CitizenKong@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I worked at a place that tried to use the private mails I wrote while at work against me in court. Where I am, that’s a criminal offense.

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        1 year ago

        I could have notified the police, but my attorney advised against it because it would have made the whole case a lot more complicated. I was suing them because of undue termination, they counter-sued. The whole thing ended in a settlement where I got a lot more money than my paltry initial compensation, which for me was a win.

  • ext23@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Not so much “my workplace” but at one of the cafes I worked at, the owner was going through a divorce, and living temporarily in his office out the back. As well as having all sorts of power tools and shit lying around (one time I accidentally knocked over an angle grinder, which turned itself on and started spazzing out all over the concrete floor, spraying sparks everywhere and leaving a huge cut in my shoe), he was also dealing a not-insignificant amount of hard drugs out of that office.

    • substill@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      “Restaurant / bar owner going through a divorce” is the start of many a tale about guns, sex, and/or bankruptcy.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I mentioned before that I worked for a guy who was high 24/7. It was a recording studio and he lived above it. There was always a bong in the kitchen surrounded by ground up weed. And law enforcement people would come in on occasion to record PSAs. He’s damn lucky they never suspected he was high as fuck.

    EDIT: This was Indiana in the 90s when weed was even more illegal here than it is now.

  • halfelfhalfreindeer@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m sure this isn’t the biggest thing, but I used to work at a big chain grocery store and “accidentally forget” to scan certain items. Old woman with a food stamp in her hand vs. u/spez-level arrogant billionaire CEO? You pay me $10/hr you fuckers, if you want me to notice the toilet paper in the bottom of the cart you’d better up my pay or help that chick out. I was far from the only one.

    • treefrog@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I think the question was what was the most illegal thing you saw the capitalists do.

      I like your spirit though!