Strangest experience at your job - past or present

jamesleecoleman

Alright, it was about 7.30 at work and I'm in the computer lab installing software. The computer lab has windows on the opposite side of the room from the hall way. Well I was at a computer and I looked up and saw a lady in all white with white hair float down the hall towards the stairway. I just continued my work and then when I was done, I walked to the server equipment on the ground floor. Well some of the bathrooms have the sensor and as I was walking past the bathroom, the light turned on and I immediately reacted like I was getting ready to fight.

Told a few people about it and well we have ghosts in our building. It used to be an old folks home.

**I told my sister and she started to send me photos of ghosts from the old Casper cartoon

NOC-Ninja

Working on VOIP project on a saturday night. Whole IT crew were walking around at 1am in the hangar with me. We all saw an old man wearing a white shirt with white hair on the other side of the hangar. This is at 1am and this hangar is locked down. As soon as we got to the other hangar, the old man was gone.

I think that was the creepiest thing I have dealt with. I hear some stuff at night and feel that pressure. I call the guard to escort me when its at night and i tell them my story. They agree that they see and hear things too when they do their rounds.

Hammer80

In my previous job I was monitoring some equipment over the weekend and I was the only person in the building which is secured. I swear I can't tell you how many times i heard door opening and closing, hearing faint talking, lights turning on and off by themselves for no reason and they were not automated or anything. Every time i got up and walked through the entire building and verified that I was the only one there, I even had access to the cameras for both entrances and I know that nobody walked in or out. It was like the place was haunted or something, it was creepy. Talked to my coworkers about it and they verified that they experienced the same weird stuff in that building that they could not explain.

gespenstern

I once had a keyboard that would pass the keystrokes to the PC only if it sits on my laps. If I placed it on a desk it would refuse to pass keystrokes. Haven't figured it out why.

GeekyChick

This isn't ghostly strange, but still strange, ok funny mostly. Anyway, I was working at a help desk in a computer lab while in college and a guy came to the counter to ask for help on something. I was going to go help him until he turned around and I noticed he had a long string of toilet paper hanging out of the back of his pants, No lie! I just couldn't do it, I had no idea what to say/do. I sent another guy out to help him. I have no idea to this day whether he told him.

p@r0tuXus

Worked overnights in a NOC. Walked rounds outside. German Shepard Sized Coyote across the street walked the same pace and direction I did, parallell to me. It stopped when I stopped and it just watched me, watching it. That was eerie.

TechGromit

I had the Halon **** on me one night. Was working Swing shift, a employee comes to the computer room to get a dot matrix printer ribbon. As I open the glass door to the computer room to go into the back room to get the ribbon, the alarm does off and the halon shoots out of the funnels in the ceiling. Scared the crap out of me, I had no idea what what going on.

What happened was there is a button on the wall to release the halon in an emergency. There was a ring on the button to prevent the halon from being accidentally released. The idea was you pull the small ring down, to allow to be able press the button in an emergency. Well one day a security guard comes along and sees the ring and thinks this is a safety issue, how are you support to push the button in an emergency? So he removes the ring, it was only a matter of time before someone bumped into the button and dumped the halon, and that day was when the girl came down for the printer ribbon, as I was opening the door, she leaned on the wall and pressed the button.

To make matters worse, the dumb ass security supervisors later come down to look at the incident, go into the back room with the halon tanks are when I wasn't around, see there is an A/B lever and switch it, now the B tank halon ****. What a bunch of rocket scientists. They asked me about the lever earlier before I left for the night and I told them not to touch it, it will **** the other tank. Guess they didn't believe me. It cost the company $10,000 to refill those tanks.



I recall one day working in the basement of a golf course club house the company purchased. I was kneeing down working on a Cat. 5 punch panel, punch down cables, after a half hour or so I start to stand up and my pants catch on a sharp edge of something, it ripped my pants from the top of my pants all half way down my leg. I had to hold the back my my pants together as I came up the stairs of the basement, through the club house, across the parking lot to get to my car to go home and get another pair of pants. Fortunately not too many people were around and my lived fairly close by, talk about bad luck.


One day as I'm arriving to work before I got to my office, I had to fart real bad, but it wasn't a fart if you know what I mean, tossed the underwear in the trash in the bathroom and went directly home to wash up and get new clothes.


One day as an electrician helper, I rewired the plug on a commercial mixer in the kitchen of a pizzeria, when I plugged in the plug, I seen the biggest electrical short in my life, I jump back and screamed. I exited the kitchen, everyone in the restaurant was looking at me, I go out to the truck to tell my boss what happened, and he said, you didn't mix up the three phase wire did you and I'm like... what's three phase? I was just a helper without any formal training, I've never heard of three phase before that day.



One day leaving a job site, my boss is driving his car and I was driving the van, he takes off and I'm trying to back out of a driveway, I have construction trucks on either side of me on the street and a car across the street. I try to back out slowly and carefully as I can, but I have no room to maneuver and no one to guide me, I tap the car behind me, i can see it rocking. Than I pull forward and the trucks ladders get tangle with the ladders of one of the other construction trucks. What I nightmare, I had to get back into the house to get one of the guys to move there trucks, I never didn't tell anyone about that car, don't know if I dented it or now.


Seriously how much time do you have, I can keep going all day.

TechGromit

GeekyChick wrote: »

I was going to go help him until he turned around and I noticed he had a long string of toilet paper hanging out of the back of his pants, No lie! I just couldn't do it, I had no idea what to say/do. I sent another guy out to help him. I have no idea to this day whether he told him.

I had this happen to me before, I use toilet paper to place on the seat to sit on. Well one day one of the pieces got stuck to my pants when I pulled them up and buttoned them. It wasn't the same paper pieces I used to wipe with. I'm sure that's was happened in this guys case.

GeekyChick

TechGromit wrote: »

I had this happen to me before, I use toilet paper to place on the seat to sit on. Well one day one of the pieces got stuck to my pants when I pulled them up and buttoned them. It wasn't the same paper pieces I used to wipe with. I'm sure that's was happened in this guys case.

You know what, I bet you're right. I hadn't even thought about that. That's so much better than what I was thinking.

Fulcrum45

My office is in an old semi- abandoned industrial complex. This place is about 4 city blocks in size and old- circa 1920. Warehouses, offices and manufacturing plants all over. Every now and then I would get a co-worker and a flashlight as we would wander around after work. Amazing what you find in an office or data room that has been left in place for 10+ years. Yellowed blinking CRT monitors, floppy disks strewn about, Cisco 2900xd switches still in the rack, etc. Anyway, one night (it was Dec. it gets dark early) a buddy and I were looking over the old factory. As you moved about you could hear your foot steps because it has wooden floors. I suddenly heard a third set of footsteps. I looked out over the floor but there was nothing but the sound of footsteps coming our way. Buddy and I looked at each other and bolted. Not sure if I would rather it be a stab-happy hobo or a g-g-g-ghost!

roninkai

I've been told to keep an ear out for the "ghost in the cubical" who likes to rapidly type at 11pm, but I have yet to hear it.
Apparently others who've done late shifts have though. Still waiting...

volfkhat

Fulcrum45 wrote: »

Buddy and I looked at each other and bolted. Not sure if I would rather it be a stab-happy hobo or a g-g-g-ghost!

zoinks!

Blucodex

Back in 2001, had the FBI show up and take away a sysadmin (we'll call him Jim). He was running a warez server on company hardware and advertised it as "Jim's Warez".

SMH...

nole07

Back at my old job I used to do field work in the service department. My main niche was setting up the computers with some monitoring software that would monitor devices deployed mostly underground (oxygen monitors, carbon monoxide monitors) in mining and tunneling sites. Well we had this one customer who kept calling us that they kept losing their alarm sounds while outside of the office. Headphone jack on pc was tied to a splitter which sent audio output to a set of speakers in the office near the pc and outside of the building to an external alarm, mostly just a giant bullhorn speaker.

After a few days of troubleshooting I was sent to go and check it out. I get on site and i noticed the outside bullhorn is just unplugged from the audio cable. I go inside and show the guy what was going on and that it was a simple fix, plugged it up and tested it. Good go to. Now this site was networked through VPN to another site down the road, basically the other end of the mine/tunnel and the guys down there wanted to get the same alarms as the main site.

Well these guys kept calling now saying that they kept losing the connection. That it was mostly happening over the weekend. These guys would leave on Friday, sound and connection good, come in Monday and they would have to restart the connection and plug in the speaker. I tell these guys that I would remote in over the weekend multiple times just to check the connection.

The first time I remote in I get an image of **** on the screen. I had to do a double take to make sure I hadn't accidentally opened the window on my own pc. Nope, it was the remote pc. So I start recording the session in order to show my boss at work.

So I set up a call with the guys on the site, show them the recorded session and they just died laughing. Here is what was going on.

On the weekends when no one is there, they have a security guard on site just to make sure no one comes by and steals stuff. Well they left the offices unlocked for this guy to use the bathroom and what not. He was going into the office, closing the monitoring software (accidentally probably) which would kill the connection. He would then load up some **** site. Well the sound is split and is going outside to a loud bullhorn speaker. He would then unplug the external speaker so he wasn't blasting that stuff down the road for all the neighbors to hear.

So in the end, dude was fired. lol

sillymcnasty

Worked at a college, caught a few students about to do it. I walked away, and came back 10 minutes later, they were still there. Like come on, I'm not trying to get anybody in trouble, vacate the premesis lol

SpetsRepair

Strangest experiences

I've learned a lot from the IT field, here's some things

Don't put too much trust into your coworkers
Network lab is setup with equipment I personally installed/documented for a few people to know about who are involved in the project
Come to work Monday morning, whole lab is down - Cabling not following the standard and everything is out of place. We do have locks on the network racks but rarely lock them

Network equipment gets ordered for a POC project I'm documenting
Come back in a week, equipment is missing from the box
Certain things that can be put in your pocket just end up walking out of a network room....

Still enjoy working in this field but being an engineer you almost want everything to be in your hands and don't rely so much on others..

scaredoftests

Plenty stories, but one sticks out in my mind. I was the network admin for a lab, one guy thought he was hot sh## and would never listen to me (a real male sexist). unreal. He requests his own printer (I object, but he wins, since some of his stuff was 'secret'). One day, I look on the network printer and see pictures of naked women were printed out (it was from that guy). I knew this, but I walked in my boss's office to show him the printouts and as if he printed it (I knew he did not, but I wanted to prove a point that the guy was NOT printing out sensitive information). Eventually, that guy was fired for other issues...
It was amusing to see the shocked look on my boss's face.

dhay13

One place I worked there was me and my manager. A worker had a PC in his office and another in the warehouse that was primarily for him but others could log on with their login to create entries in the inventory. He complained about catching somebody looking at **** on the warehouse computer so I told him I would keep an eye out. The problem was that he would never log out of the warehouse PC. I told him we couldn't prove it wasn't him if he didn't so he said he would log out from now on. This continues so I talk to him and tell him it is happening on his login. He says 'well I keep my password written in the desk drawer'. A few days go by and I can see the traffic in the firewall logs. I RDP into his warehouse computer and see **** on the screen. I hurry down to the shop to tell him whoever is in the warehouse now is the culprit. Well I don't see him anywhere until a few minutes later he walks out of the warehouse. He retired a couple of months later and the **** activity stopped. I think he made up this story as maybe my manager had mentioned to him about it so he made the story up to cover his tracks.

Same company, we were told by the CEO to start keeping a close eye out for anyone viewing **** on the network. Well there were 3 people that were. The one mentioned above, the President, and the CEO's son. So we kept quiet about it knowing what may likely happen if we brought it up. The CEO did send out a memo about the consequences and it all stopped after that.

jcundiff

Blucodex wrote: »

Back in 2001, had the FBI show up and take away a sysadmin (we'll call him Jim). He was running a warez server on company hardware and advertised it as "Jim's Warez".

SMH...

about this same time frame, +/- a year, we had a Secret Service team come in and take a help desk analyst and his (our) workstation... never did get either back... there are certain words you dont type in the same sentence (or even paragraph) on a public (msn) forum.... we all lost internet privileges after that one...

Another supervisor and I watched two tornadoes go over one corner of the building in a bad storm one night... we got damn lucky, they went over with out touching the building...

Eightn9ne

TechGromit wrote: »

I had this happen to me before, I use toilet paper to place on the seat to sit on. Well one day one of the pieces got stuck to my pants when I pulled them up and buttoned them. It wasn't the same paper pieces I used to wipe with. I'm sure that's was happened in this guys case.

Lucky this is just a thread and we don't know each other in real life but still feel weird admitting to it but, it has happened to me as well hahaha.