I used to work at a place in Chicago and I had a co-worker that we’ll call Tim.
Tim was the biggest a** kisser I’ve ever met in my life and all of us there couldn’t stand the way he used to suck up to the bosses and make the rest of us look like losers (which we kinda were…).
Eventually, Tim got on everyone’s nerves and then one day he left and never came back. And we all jumped for joy!
Folks on AskReddit shared stories about the worst brown-nosers they’ve ever seen.
Enjoy!
1. Jeez…
“My immediate supervisor and I were doing a job offsite at a partner company’s lab, like an hour’s drive from our company, and we finished our task at like 4:30, and I was like, f**k it, lets end the workday.
He insisted on calling the director and inform him we were done working offsite, and ask him to officially give us permission to go home a half hour early.
The director was like, “You called and bothered me to ask this? JUST GO HOME, seriously, you two are out in the field because you’re supposed to be able to make decisions like this on your own.””
2. Just got right in there.
“The girl my boss hired to help me and I trained started having an affair with the second in command.
For the next year I got to watch her, feed him fruit with her mouth while doing almost nothing all day. She would go on 2 hour lunches.
Got promoted, a raise and I had to continue to take the load of the work she was initially hired for.”
3. Fakin’ it.
“I used to work with a girl who would always change her voice whenever she would interact with our boss to try and seem s**y.
Her voice would literally go up several octaves in tone and she would adopt this Valley Girl type of inflection.
If he wasn’t around she talked completely different.”
4. What a tool.
“One of my co-workers is the biggest tooI have ever met.
I have worked part-time for the company for 7 years and met hundreds of people none of which I disliked. Sure there were people I would not hang out or even talk with outside of work, but at work I got along. This kid (m21) is on another f**king level and I can actually say I h**e him.
First day on the job he comes in and acts like he owns the place. Two guys were working on this project and he comes over and says “Yea, good job on this part. This is how I want this done around here” both these guys are in there 30s, been with the company for years and just stand there looking at him like he is stupid.
He always called himself the smartest person in the department, and how he is going to run this place. And because he finished his bachelor’s a year early he is a genius. Also because of his degree he thinks he understands the inner workings of running a business perfectly. This kid letures on about efficiency all the time, yet he is on his phone 80% of his shift or talking.
Everyone h**es this kid. Department managers, full timers, and even vendors from outside the company can’t stand him and talk nasty behind his back. He is clueless. 6 people reported him to HR, which our rep doesn’t like him either lol. They had a meeting with him and changed nothing.
The while reason he can act like this is because he is friends with our corporate district managers son. And he snitches to this guy about stuff going on. It’s bad enough he is a tool and a snitch, but it’s even worse that this DM listens to him, even though he does nothing.
Thank God I am leaving that job soon.”
5. Bride-to-be.
“This coworker was getting married and she talked a lot about her wedding at work.
There was another coworker very close in age she bounced ideas off of and they became really close over the course of wedding planning and the bride used to call the coworker her work bestie and make all sorts of references to her coming to the wedding.
Bride-to-be eventually told coworker that she would have loooooved to have her at the wedding but there just wasn’t room for her, the amount of people had been settled on much earlier etc etc. Coworker understood and took it pretty well.
Turns out coworker is very well connected to some higher ups in the office and was later talking to someone who revealed that she had met Bride-to-be twice and immediately gotten an invite to the wedding. When they found out the lowly coworker hadn’t been invited the higher up didn’t want to go and convinced a whole bunch of other higher ups, who also barely knew the bride and had gotten invites, not to go either because Bride was clearly using her wedding for networking.
The bride to be got a pretty s**tty reputation as a suck up after that.
Also it was extra weird because we work in a pretty tame white collar office where you don’t need to be a crazy networker to have a successful career or rise in the ranks. Like I know in some industries you kind of have to invite your boss, but this isn’t one of them.
Plenty of people don’t invite anyone from their work to their wedding and no one really cares.”
6. Yes, boss.
“I had a boss who was into “finer” things of life. Good quality clothes, expensive wine, exotic food, cigars from all over the planet, heaps of watches and expensive cars type thing.
So a co worker of mine, within two weeks of beginning bought my boss some cufflinks worth in the hundreds. Over the course of two year this co worker became known as a yes man. Never disagreed with the boss at all.
He also self appointed himself as his right hand man always telling other people how to do things because that’s how the boss would want it. (Kinda like a less aggressive version of Dwight from the office)
Any way a position officially opens up to become supervisor (second highest rank) of the department. Naturally my coworker went for it, telling everywhere would listen he would get it because the boss promised it. What he didn’t know is that the boss was leaving, named the then supervisor as his successor, who then picked some one who had been working there for about 9 months.
Need less to say my co worker has been acting very distant to the new manager and supervisor.”
7. Group interviews sound horrible.
“I was in a group interview once where I was one of probably 12-15 people.
Group interviews are pure gold for a** kissing. In that interview, we had a guy that tripped over a table and knocked it over because he wanted to be the first one to shake the interviewers’ hands.
Also a lot of, “and if you pick me then I will bring this talent to the company…” bulls**t.”
8. This is amazing.
“During a meeting with about 6 people around a table, the male boss spilled his drink on his own lap and ruined his trousers.
As he got up to leave, this male co-worker took his shirt off, kneeled, and proceeded to try and dry the boss’ trousers with his own shirt, in a position that everyone immediately understood as totally akin to a bl**job about to happen. To make matters worse, after two or three strokes, we all could see through the trousers that the boss had an instant massive hard on that he couldn’t hide even if he wanted to. So there we were, watching bad quality amateur p**n live in the office.
After about 30/40 seconds of this, the boss looked around and must have seen our faces so he left immediately. And the co-worker just went back to his chair and sat there, shirtless, like nothing happened. We’re all like ‘ok, this meeting is over’ and start to collect our belongings to leave as the boss comes back with a fresh pair of trousers in full business mode so we conclude another 20 minutes of the meeting with a shirtless boss-masturbating dude sitting at the table.
The se**ual tension between them was so palpable that I really hope they had a go at each other afterwards.”
9. Trying to look good.
“I know a guy who basically just summarizes group meetings at the end and then asks people if they have questions or if he left anything out just to make it look like he has leadership potential and is contributing.
Horrible, incompetent worker but sure knows how to make himself look good.”
10. I stayed late!
“I worked at a digital marketing startup for about a year. Most of the employees were in their early to mid-20s (so was I at the time), and management absolutely played favorites.
Working late hours was a solid way to get management to notice you, even if your work didn’t necessitate staying late. I once got s**t for leaving at 5:30, even after working a full 8 hours and getting all my work done.
One morning we were all having a company meeting and one guy mentioned how tired he was since he stayed in the office until 10pm the previous night.
Immediately, this other guy loudly says “Well, I was here until 11!” Then he literally looked around to make sure management heard him.”
11. Follow the rules.
“I wasn’t there to see it, but have been told it many times.
During Christmas we have a secret Santa with the rule it can only be worth $20 or less. One woman ended up getting our big boss as her secret Santa, and instead of sticking to the $20 rule, she brought an expensive handbag and wine for our boss.
Our boss, seeing how it definitely wasn’t $20 or less, had to find out who it was, and tell her to return it as it would be seen as a form of bribery in the workplace and well, obviously did not follow the secret Santa rule.”
12. Gross.
“I had a co-worker who literally recorded a conversation between two of his colleagues on his phone who were discussing the boss’s recent decisions.
He then took said conversation to the boss. Nothing happened except nobody trusted him from then on. He was an unpleasant, aggressive twat also.
It’s funny because throughout his entire employment with us he accused everyone around him of being snakes. Where in reality he was the biggest snake of all.
He got fired after he got into a shouting match with one of the cleaning staff. And he even expected me to stick up for him because I helped him out when he first joined. I did not and recommended termination.
Absolute scumbag. Never ever want to see that piece of s**t human being ever again.”
How about you?
What’s the worst example of brown-nosing that you’ve ever seen?
Talk to us in the comments and let us know!
