What the most unprofessional thing you saw a person do?

I used to work for a typesetting and layout firm, back before desktop publishing had completely taken over. The owner took a job outside the business, and to look over things, she hired a manager. His job was primarily to be a salesman, to dig up some new business for us.

Mike, the new manager, appeared eager to learn the ropes. Pretty soon, though, things starting to look strange. Rather than beating the streets looking for clients, or coming up with new strategies or whatever, Mike spent pretty much all day in the office reorganizing the company files. OK, sure, he needs to become familiar with our clients and the work we've done for them before, but this went on for weeks and weeks.

So, I'm working away, and another designer is working away, and at that time, we had a lot of work — we were pretty buried at the time. I get a call from our largest client at the time telling me that the copy for their monthly catalog was ready. I'd always gone over to pick it up before — our largest client, remember — but I am just swamped and have deadlines bearing down on me. I ask Mike if he'd go over to pick up the copy. Rather than recognizing the situation and helping out, he gave me a long lecture about why, no, the client should come to us with the copy.

I was so mad. I grabbed my coat and blew out of the office, running over and picking up the copy. It took me almost an hour that I couldn't afford, but, again — biggest client.

Later on, there were... issues. Mike had taken it upon himself to speak with our client — a nice woman, just a little high strung — and that hadn't gone well. She came into our office and it was easy to see that she wasn't happy about what Mike had told her. Anyway, we get the issues worked out. She's still mad, but I think we're all good.

As she's walking out the door, though, Mike pats the client on the back. She rounds on him, her eyes on fire, and says, "Do not every touch me again." She then storms out of the office.

I rush out, following her to the parking lot to apologize for Mike's behavior (you know things are bad when I'm the voice of reason). She was mad, but she wasn't mad at us — we'd always bent over backward to get her catalogs done on time and she knew it. She was mad at Mike. He didn't do anything but add more stress to her already stressful job.

I was so angry. Later, I starting writing in a notebook I kept at my desk. I was just venting into it, as I was wont to do. When I went home, I left my notebook on the desk. Mike took my notebook and read my notes (the term "less than useless" cropped up more than once) and took it to the firm's owner.

The boss called me in to talk about my notes. I was livid. I'd never been so angry at someone in my life. So, fine, I laid out everything that I had written in my notes as a way of venting about the situation.

The boss ultimately concluded that Mike was a luxury that we could no longer afford and fired him. I became the manager, but I was also the only employee, as the other designer had quit during this period. There was no way I could possibly bring in enough money to keep the place going, but apparently the owner wasn't very good at math.

What a disaster.

One of the most notable ones, was when a towing company driver had a "tantrum" because I said something about my car door flying open after it was on the moving truck. I'd mentioned it wasn't closed before that, and he'd just dismissed it.
The expletives and threatening to take my car off the truck, sure did add to to stress of the whole incident.

My former colleague (I'm a retired teacher) stealing my class rosters "as a prank." This got me in trouble for months. He played other pranks as well and eventually got fired.

I tried to protest that I had not "lost" my rosters but no one believed me. I even caught him and no one listened to me. Then the administrators caught him and he was, finally gone.

A hotel worker pissing in all the ice machines.

Falsely accuse people of things they didn't do.

Supervisor beginning a work meeting by yelling “People!” We would get our butts chewed out in a group meeting because they would run off new hires and not train the replacements right & they would mess up. So everyone got yelled at for the way they were managing our department

Repeat things their coworkers tell them in confidence in the break room and bring their computer to work and spend time that should have been working looking for other jobs. Telling students they should speak Spanish in an English speaking school.

Lawyers gossiping about their clients.

Have a tantrum on TV.

An older report stood up in a meeting with executives and accused myself and my boss of trying to sabotage her. (Given part of my salary came from her success.) She ended up getting suspended after there was an HR investigation and I arranged for her to report to a different manager. A few months later she went on leave. She was diagnosed with dementia and the last I heard of her she was in a care facility.

not take life/job/relationship seriously *bows in his honor*

a co-worker shove a patient to the floor.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWz2KGhLt04]

Always on their phone instead of doing their work

Higher ups being lazy and leaving others to drown in work

Very poor training and wonder why they run off new employees