16 bosses share the worst example of employee misconduct they've ever witnessed.

Being a boss isn't always a montage of drinking whiskey in a glamorous corner office 'Mad Men'-style, most of the time it's putting out tiny and confusing employee-caused fires...

So, when a Reddit user asked, 'Bosses/HR Employees, what's the worst case of employee misconduct you've had to deal with?' people were ready to share the story of the most awkward meeting they've ever had to schedule.

Yes, it turns out that it is illegal to slowly steal company money over the course of a few years even if you have a good reason. No, you can't have threesomes in the walk-in freezer even if it's on your lunch break.

1.

Former CFO. During an investigation by our financial regulator, he backdated a document that made him appear in a slightly better light. Huge no-no in our industry. Our new acquiring firm had his PC audited, the fraud was discovered, and he was hit with a $75k fine. Hasn't worked in the industry in over 5 years. - optiongeek

2.

I've worked in restaurants for most of my life. Here are a few that stand out: Employee stole purse of another employee. The thief was caught at a store across the road, on a security camera, going on a shopping spree with the employee's credit card, WHILE STILL IN UNIFORM!

Manager trainee was left in charge of the store for the first time, just for 2 hours, to see how he could handle running a store by himself. When the management trainers came back, he was gone. When they asked where the manager-in-training went, the employees said he had gone out to get a haircut.

At one of my fast food jobs, the general manager's husband was having an affair with the assistant manager. Eventually that tension hit a rolling boil and they got into a fist fight while on the clock, in front of customers. Police had to cuff them both.

Manager was clocking people out while they were working and skimming their hours and clocking them back in as training pay (which was less than minimum wage) so she could hit her bonus. She was caught when employees started noticing their checks were much lower than anticipated. She cried when they fired her because she didn't think she was doing anything wrong. I never got back-pay from that place.

At another job, the manager was clocking out the employees at a certain point even if their job wasn't done. We closed at 10 and if the store wasn't clean by 10:30, you were clocked out and still had to stay and clean the place. - Booner999

3.

One of the assistant managers got caught taking money out of the cash office, in full view of the manager (there was a two way mirror) manager fired him but not before making him walk handcuffed through the store . Turns out former assistant manager was stealing items and had got a buddy involved - IAmALadyInBlack

4.

Had an admin girl take a scalpel, lidocaine, suture kit home from our clinic to perform her own mole removal at home. It got infected, she saw our doctor, our doctor reported it. No idea why she decided to do it at home, she was very proud when confronted and happily showed videos of it that her daughter filmed had no idea why she would be getting fired. - twirlywoo88

5.

Had someone bring in a gun and point it at another team member 'just to show' - Azarul

6.

Had a female front desk agent sleeping with a member of a railroad crew staying at the hotel. Employees are not allowed on the property while on the clock and she was sneaking in the hotel at night to the guy's room. Long story short, the guy started ignoring her calls and texts.

The employee threatened to kill the entire crew in their sleep reminding them she had master keys and their home and vehicle info to harass their families. She was let go immediately but not before stealing a few very expensive sets of keys to their work vehicles. - kenjipooh127

7.

Long-term employee who embezzled millions of dollars and pretended her wealth was from a side business. She's in jail now. - accidentswaitingwait

8.

One of the line cooks threw a pizza tray at the chef - spaghatta111

9.

Probably when the sweetest old lady ever embezzled just north of $75k from my dad's business for a just cause. He owns an ocean front resort that gets booked up well over a year in advance. As such, you are required to put down a $1k deposit that is rarely ever refunded.

Well, one of his secretaries (who was 60 years old and had worked there for years) came up with a pretty good system: she would create a fake reservation, somehow enter that the security deposit had been received, and then several weeks later cancel the reservation and refund company money to one of 8 or 9 credit cards she had created.

She did this only a couple times a month over an extended period of time until the lump sum grew large enough that it was noticed.

Turns out her daughter (adult) had gotten sick with no health insurance and the mom was using this money to pay the bills. My dad, being the nice guy he is, gave her a couple months to get the money together so she could spend time with her dying daughter and not in jail. She promptly fled to Florida where a private eye tracked her down a year or so later. - SurfinCPA

10.

Had somebody once steal around $68,000 in cash from a business I worked at over the course of a year. Nobody had any idea, we were stunned. Incredible. - furbaschwab

11.

I recently had to fire an otherwise good employee for misconduct. It wasn't about one specific incident--the employee had been warned about his behavior many times, but didn't seem willing to change, even to keep his job.

The hard part is that he was very good at his job, just had a ridiculous habit of inappropriate remarks and behavior. We have a pretty laid-back culture at my company, where, for example, swearing is commonplace, and off-color jokes happen from time to time. This guy took it way too far on many occasions, though.

Examples: constantly talking about drug use, referring to blunts, ecstasy, and LSD during professional meetings. He wasn't offensive or abusive to any specific employees, but very consistently made sexual comments that just don't belong in a workplace.

He had been told at least 5 times that this behavior could not continue if he wanted to keep his job, but nothing ever changed. Finally my boss and I had enough, decided he would never change, and fired him. - Large_banana_hammock

12.

Had someone steal $500+ dollars from the register, caught it on film. - [deleted]

13.

Was quality and compliance at a gourmet yoghurt factory that pasteurized the milk used. Pasteuriser broke and rather than tell anyone the operator pumped it into the vat for pasteurized milk. The youghurt maker who was aware of the issue decided to go ahead and use it.

This is a breech of so many regulations and enough to get the company shut down and a massive product recall imposed if the product had been released. I found out when I happened to ask the yogurt maker how he got done so fast with the break down of equipment.

We had to dump 30,000kg of product. When questioned by management the pasturiser operator and yoghurt maker said they thought it would be ok because they drink unpasteurized milk all the time and never get sick. - toeverycreature

14.

Had a contract employee manning our IT help desk at a small hospital. Logs showed him spending a LOT of time doing stock trading during the day. He was pulled aside the next day and told that was unacceptable but was given another chance. The next week's logs? Porn. - SueSudio

15.

Threw a biohazard container in a fit of rage. It was only full of pipettes, nothing that toxic. Took me a while to figure out that was why everyone in the lab was so dour. When I found out what happened, I confirmed with her and told her that was unacceptable so I had to fire her.

She cried and said it was only one time, I told her this was so unacceptable it was a 1 strike kind of situation. The rest of the lab celebrated, turned out she was a big grumpus and ruling the whole vibe I was going for. - balmergrl

16.

Had a sales guy book multiple trips to Alaska. While we did business there, we didn't do that much. Turns out he was booking trips to watch the start of the Iditarod and do some fishing. Talked to a few customers up there and they didn't even know he was their sales guy. That got him fired pretty quick. - TooBigDave