20 employees share the story of the dumbest coworker they've ever encountered.

Sharing a workspace with other people can be a fun and hilarious experience as many coworkers can end up becoming lifelong friends...

However, it's not always an exciting shift of inside jokes, roasting customers, and trauma-bonding over the boss. There's always that one coworker who earns their title as nemesis of the staff group chat. So, when a Reddit user asked, 'What's your story of the dumbest coworker you've ever had the privilege of working with?' people were ready to spill the back room tea.

1.

The one that stuck a needle all the way into my arm. We were practicing starting IV’s. Now you stick the needle in like 1/8 of an inch or so till it flashes then drop it 10 degrees and then advance it another tiny bit just to make sure the stuff is in there then slide the plastic stuff into the vein.

Easy breezy. Girl sticks the entire needle into my elbow...Bless her heart.... hope she found another field to work in - [deleted]

2.

I have no how she even got into the program, we worked in anesthesia. Our supervisor told her she had to get rid of her acrylic nails (for obvious medical reasons, she was told before she started she couldn’t have them).

To take them off she put nail polish remover in the only cup she could find, which was styrofoam, and put it in the microwave because the heat would make the polish melt faster. Microwave was ruined and she burned all the tips of her fingers.

She should not be in a medical field. She also turned to me after completing the basic CPR class and said “do you feel confident saving someone? I don’t, how many breaths do we do again?

Plus I don’t want to put my mouth on someone else’s I don’t know” (they give us one way valves to carry with us for that purpose, she thought it was a duck call) - Navydoc91

3.

One of my old coworkers was using a nail and attempting to kill a wasp with the nail gun. the wasp landed on his hand. take a wild guess where he shot the nail gun. - madmusicmajor

4.

I knew a woman that would disinfect her keyboard every morning. Like spray her computer with a 'cleaning solution' and wipe it down like she was scrubbing a toilet. Not long after, she complained to IT that several of her keys were no longer working. - MorasEscritoras

5.

I worked in a restaurant with a girl who fit the description. One day in the daylight basement where the prep kitchen and walk-in fridge are, she was slicing tomatoes. I came down to get something from the walk-in, and she immediately started yelling at me to shut the door and not let the cold air into the room, that she was freezing, and had been wearing a sweater all day.

This is winter in Oregon, so yeah it’s f*cking cold sometimes. Then I notice the window behind her is open. The large, completely open window that is directly behind her is wide open. She could have fallen out of it. When I mentioned this, she just kind of stared at it for a second and said ”oh, yeah, I guess so”. - Fireball_Ed

6.

Guy I worked with at Little Caesars. He would says things I would call Thomasisms. One lovely such encounter was him telling our boss how his cousin got arrested over the weekend.

Boss asks 'Has he had any priors?', guy says, 'Naw this is his first prior.' Some time later he says, 'See us shift managers are like the anchor to the ship. What happens to a ship without an Anchor? Ship sinks.' - entergimmickhere

7.

I used to work with this guy who was the world's biggest compulsive liar. It was insane the stuff this guy said. We live in Alaska, and he claimed to be friends with a ton of celebrities. Not only that, but all completely different celebrities. He said he was friends with Kevin Hart, Kobe Bryant, Seth Rogan, Lil Jon, just a huge plethora of random people that I know he's never even met.

He also claimed he had millions of dollars tied up in some bank account that a bunch of different people 'screwed him out of,' so all of the money was just sitting there but he couldn't access it.

Then there were the stories he told daily about having threesomes every night, countless health problems he claimed to have, all of these crazy, horrible things that happened to him because he just has such “bad luck,' the works.

The craziest part of the whole thing was that he either a.) believed all of these insane things he was saying, or b.) thought that what he was saying was believable enough that other people would believe it. The whole thing was just wild. - CatherineConstance

8.

Worked at a home improvement warehouse in the garden section. Had a coworker who would routinely hide in the plastic sheds instead of doing the work he was getting paid to do. Customers would from time to time open up the shed he was hiding in and then he would move to a new shed. - yellowzealot

9.

Former boss: 'If people really had cancer, why don't they just drink bleach. Bleach kills everything.'

Me: 'Well yeah, but that's the beauty of medicine, is to kill the thing without killing the patient.' - [deleted]

10.

Crashtest Kevin. The guy was amazingly accident prone. I worked with him over the course of nearly 2 years, and it was simply amazing to watch.

We were environmental field techs, performing field testing work on landfills. He dropped his car keys in to a groundwater monitoring well. I don't even know how you do that, but he managed to do it.

There is no way to recover your car keys from a 400 foot deep groundwater monitoring well, and to this day, I do not know if the keys would cause the water to come back 'hot', meaning a failed sample.

He would forget when he placed his soil or water samples on top of his truck, and would drive off, destroying the samples, meaning he would have to work late to collect them all over again. This was a regular occurrence. I seriously could type up dozens of examples of his stupidity, but I think you get the idea. - Drumlin

11.

Summer job during college, working assembly line. My job was to put two screws into each item that came down the line. Everyone else had a similarly mind-numbing task. We'd all have been replaced by robots by now.

About once a week someone would bring in a rubber snake or spider and put it into a part coming down the line. When the part made it to Janet, Janet would scream. She would pick out the spider with her fingernails and put it on the line next to the part.

Then the line would move and the spider would come to me. I would wait until she wasn't looking and throw the spider back up the line to a guy that would put the rubber spider into a part and send it down the line. Janet would scream every time. For an 8 hr shift. - Bobs_my_Uncle_Too

12.

I'm an engineer. I had to explain how parentheses work (in math), to another engineer. He never understood it. - rem1021

13.

Oh man, this freakin girl I worked with was so dumb... we worked at Disney working on a ride, and whenever our fire alarm would go off (which happened a lot...like, way to much) we had to evac everyone from the building and cycle out the ride vehicles that were still out on the track with guests on them (aka have them automatically come back to the station so we could unload the guests).

We’re supposed to stay calm and tell people that we’re having technical difficulties (vary rarely does Disney evac the whole building for technical difficulties btw if the whole building clears out including the queue line, there’s a bigger problem FYI). She did not do any of that.

So, she was at main console (aka was in charge of the ride) when the fire alarm starts blinking. She freaks. Out. She slams down on the E-Stop, which shuts off all power to the ride and turns the damn lights on. Guests are like wtf? No one on dock knows what just happened bc she didn’t call anyone to say we had a signal 25 (fire), so none of us know wtf is going on.

But lights are on and e stop is pressed, so we gotta get these people out of the building and off the ride. But, then we find out that what actually happened was a FIRE and she shut off ALL POWER to the ride, which means that the ride has stopped and the guests on it are potentially burning to death out on the ride with the fire. And WE have to go on to the track and the possible fire and go get them!

We were so pissed, and the whole time this bitch is panicking and freaking guests out. A coordinator comes up and asked wtf is going on and we explain, and I swear he was gonna wring her neck. Thankfully, the fire wasn’t anything serious and we were able to get the guests off alright but damn everyone was pissed. - theOG_Stan

14.

We had an invoice that needed to be paid within 120 days, dated a few months back. She pulled up a calendar and started counting days one by one. She looked at me and said “are we really about to count to 120?”

I took the calendar and added up the days in each month, plus the day of the month it currently was. She looked at me wide eyed and very genuinely said “wow you’re really smart.” - AiryNan

15.

I used to work with a guy that was told to drain the used fry oil. Instead of using the metal tool to pull the drain, he simply reached into the frier up to his elbow. He burned himself horrifically and was off of work for the remainder of time that I worked there - ripricky1234

16.

My friend used to work at a famous toy store that went out of business years ago. She was a manager and was in the back doing some paper work and an employee nervously approached her saying he wasn't sure if he should take the money a costumer gave him.

My friend asked what was wrong with the money and he showed it to her, it was black and white, and only was printed on one side. She came out to tell the guy he would not be getting the Playstation he was trying to buy and the guy just snatched it and ran. - ghoulishgirl

17.

Bobby. Working as a valet at a hotel, whenever someone needed their car from the garage we would drive another car to the garage, park it, then bring up the car that was requested.

Wasn't much organization so you pretty much would park wherever you could find a spot, then wander around the garage and find the car you were looking for. Bobby was tasked with this one day.

Drove to the garage, got out of the car, wandered around for a little bit, then brought back the same car he parked. Because he forgot which one was which. - leex0

18.

Was turning some inspections into the admin who was reading numbers off of an open Excel spreadsheet and adding them on a calculator to get the sum to put into a cell on the same spreadsheet. Jaw hit the floor and I walked away in shock. - mr_bots

19.

They worked in the deli attached to the store I work at and two of my favourite stories were when they (repeatedly) cooked chickens with their plastic wrapping still on them, and when taking a full tray of sausages out of the oven they walked to the hot counter...

saw it was rather full and instead of moving stuff around to make space just walked straight to the bin and dumped the whole tray. Didn't understand why that wasn't the right thing to do. - LordKilcullen

20.

Worked at a retail store. One gentleman who had been working there for a few years was working the register. We sold big appliances. A couple comes in to buy a washer and dryer with cash -- $100 bills.

My co-worker marks every bill with one of those counterfeit pens. If the bills are fake, it will be a dark color and if they are real they will be yellowish. Well, every one turned black and he called the police.

Police came. Turns out my coworker used a permanent marker and not the counterfeit pen to check each $100 bills. - estral23