Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: If you ever left work and immediately had to text somebody like, yo, you're not going to believe this. This podcast is for you.
Welcome to Work Drama, the podcast where we unpack workplace stories people whisper about trauma, bond over and still think about years later. I'm Lizbeth. I come from the medical world, so I'm here to add context, logic, and the question that should have been asked before someone hit reply all.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: And I'm Sharon, today's resident instigator, group chat voice, and depending on the situation, HR's worst nightmare.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: I left my in person job for remote work, and I realized you don't miss the commutes, but you definitely miss the drama.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Meanwhile, I'm still in the trenches.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: So we fixed that.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: Until your submissions start rolling in, and they will. We're sourcing stories from the Internet. We'll be breaking down anonymized stories from offices, hospitals, and everywhere in between, reacting in real time, calling out the nonsense, and figuring out if something is actually toxic or just wildly mishandled.
Names change jobs, protected opinions very much included. And for legality purposes. This is not legal advice, girl.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Let's get into it.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: All right, Sharon, this is episode one. How are you feeling?
[00:01:15] Speaker B: How exciting.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: I'm super excited. I need some work drama in my life.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: I'm. I've had enough of it. Yeah, girl.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: Well, you're still in the trenches. I'm. Girl, I'm at home in front of my computer all day. My leg's cramping up. I'm missing it. I think for like the first week. First two weeks after I left my job, people were messaging me. I had like three people messaging me with, like, the drama. And I was like, thank God I left. But it was like, I still felt. I still felt like, part of it, right? Like, I was like, ooh, like, this is going on. Oh, my God, that's going on. I couldn't even believe what was going on, honestly. I was like, I left at a really good time, I think. But that stopped after two weeks. They, like, just forgot about me, girl. They forgot about me.
[00:01:54] Speaker B: And I'm like, I could do without 100%, girl.
[00:01:58] Speaker A: What's going on? Tell me.
[00:01:59] Speaker B: Work is just annoying, per usual.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: I don't know. I'm kind of like, I don't miss it that much. But, like, I just.
I didn't realize how much fun it was. It's funny because in the moment, you're kind of like, it's so annoying. And sometimes it's like, draining, right? But then when you're home alone, working from home, not doing like my whole team. It's all remote. So it's like we do slack and me and one of the girls, we do kind of vent to each other a little bit. But I don't know, it's. It's different. I don't really know her. Right. Like, I don't. She lives out in Texas and I don't know much about her. And I'm a little cautious too because I'm like, I don't know what her relationship with the team is and you know, I don't want to get back, so I don't say too much. But it's just like, I don't know, I have nobody to vent to. And it's a whole different field. Right. Because I was in the medical field. No, this is remote sales. And I'm like, it's so different to them still learning the ropes around it and everything. And some. I don't know, it's just.
It's been quiet.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: And then like nobody tells you that your pets are gonna be all over you. Like, so I have a dog, Apollo, a cat, Chip.
Chip jumps on my lap in the middle of calls, like distracting me. Apollo's barking every time a car passes by. Well, maybe not every time, but like, you know, and I'm just home all day with the dog and the cat, talking to myself like I need, I need some, some work stuff.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: I don't know. Again, I much rather, much rather just
[00:03:22] Speaker A: not deal with it. I don't know. But. But what would you feel like if you were home, you weren't at the job anymore and just working from home.
How would you feel like not having that direct access to like other adults?
Just being with Junior all day. The kids with Junior right now all day. Because he's not in school yet.
[00:03:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm not really sure. I think I'd lose my marbles just being with Junior alone.
But I guess, yeah, thinking about it, I would miss the. The work drama, the work issues, the stupidity.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: Right. That's the part of it. The stupidity.
It's just like sometimes it makes you feel better about what you're going through. Right. That's so bad. But like sometimes you need that perspective in your life. Yes. I don't know. But I don't know. Let's see what this work drama is. Let's get into Episode one Work drama. Let's get into it.
Alright, for our first story, picture this. Retail meets health care lab in the back. Public store in the front. Cash drawers, safe in the office.
And one employee who technically never stopped coming to work.
Okay, so this story comes from a medical adjacent office. Think retail meets healthcare. There's a staff member, we'll call him Ricky Rich. Ricky used to be the first person in the building every morning. You know that person that just loves coming into work smiling way too early in the morning?
[00:04:44] Speaker B: Ew.
[00:04:45] Speaker A: Yeah, you love him, but you kind of hate him. Anyway, so management gave him the keys and the alarm code. Sharon, any red flags?
[00:04:55] Speaker B: Definitely.
[00:04:58] Speaker A: Yeah. What are the red flags?
[00:05:00] Speaker B: The coming in, smiling for sure.
[00:05:03] Speaker A: Like, why are you so happy at 7 in the morning? That's ridiculous.
Anyway, fast forward. Ricky gets fired. Doesn't matter why. He's just gone. No more. It's a great day to have a great day at 7am before anyone's even had their coffee. But months pass. Then management realizes something weird. Over the past couple years, small amounts of money have been going missing. Not thousands, all at once. $22 here, $6 there. 1875 from another drawer. Random and inconsistent, really. It looked like sloppy cash counting or someone forgot to, like, log the petty cash. Nothing dramatic, but when they added it up, girl, it totaled over $40,000.
[00:05:46] Speaker B: Whoa.
[00:05:48] Speaker A: Be honest. Are you impressed or are you, like, irritated?
[00:05:52] Speaker B: That's shocking. That's a lot of money, right?
[00:05:55] Speaker A: And even over the years, like, how do you not notice that?
Anyway, so management checks the old security footage. They rewind to when the shortages first started, and they see Ricky coming in before opening, which is early as hell because they open at 7am, letting himself in, walking into the safe, taking small amounts of cash and just leaving. Acting like he's just dipping into his piggy bank. Case closed, right? Or is it?
What do you think?
[00:06:23] Speaker B: Ballsy?
[00:06:24] Speaker A: Yeah, very. So here's the problem, though. Ricky had already been fired and the money was still going missing.
So they pull more recent footage and guess what they see?
[00:06:36] Speaker B: What?
[00:06:37] Speaker A: What do you think?
[00:06:39] Speaker B: Maybe a co worker joined in, like
[00:06:42] Speaker A: he had an accomplice or something? Could be. Could be. Well, what they noticed was they never took his keys and they never changed the fucking alarm code.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: That's awful.
That's silly. That's funny.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: Yeah. So once a week, on his way to the bar, which was down the street, by the way, pretty Ricky over here would let himself into the building after hours. He'd grab $10 here, $15 there, and leave for years.
Okay, so we obviously do not support stealing, but I need to understand something. Is this bold criminal behavior or is it management's fault for their incompetence?
[00:07:19] Speaker B: I mean, slightly both, honestly. Yeah, he's very bold for continuing to steal from the job, but kind of an idiot move and fumble from the company itself for not taking away his
[00:07:33] Speaker A: keys right in the alarm code. Like, not thing. But, you know, everybody liked Ricky, right? He was like the it's a good day to have a good day kind of guy. They weren't thinking. Ricky was.
Was doing some sticky stuff behind the scenes. It's crazy. But like, just even also, like coming from, for example, for me, from the medical field, they're so strict around security stuff. Like, you have money in the building, all this stuff. Security codes. Like, how do you drop the ball? How do you fumble that?
Like, can you blame him a little bit?
I don't support it.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: I've had around. I've been around a few co workers that have stolen from our company and either the company seen it and just turned a blind eye or.
Yeah, that's great.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: Well, these people obviously weren't even paying attention. That's another thing. Who's the security people? You're not watching the cameras, like, unless something happens.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: Clearly not, because you're not.
[00:08:25] Speaker A: How do you not see him for years coming into the building where he's like, I got this, like, I got my own little extra little piggy bank, literally. And then going down the street to go drink it, like, just drinking for free on company dime. That's insane. So if you were the company, though, would you like, press charges? I mean, it's $40,000.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: I definitely would. That's a lot of money.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: But, like, can Ricky be like. But they never.
I mean, I guess that's not a good argument, huh? No, definitely not. It's like, Ricky, you know, you know he's wrong. That's crazy. But Yeah, I mean, $40,000, Ricky could have reinvested in that, like, and done something instead of going to the bar. He's crazy. But I don't know, he got. He got a few years under the belt. Hopefully he doesn't get a few years in jail.
We'll see how that turns out for Ricky.
So that was our first story. What did you think of?
Wasn't bad. Too bad. We need some more stories, right? We need people to send their stories in. We want to hear from different places, different offices, like, what's going on at your job? Cause I need that drama. I'm working from home and I'm so bored sometimes I literally, I need.
I used to be like the Switzerland at my office. People would come to my desk and give me one side of the story. And then I hear the other side of the story, and I'm just like, I know both sides. And I'm like, oh, my God, like, so juicy. And now I'm just, like, on zooms with random people. And it's not. It's not the same.
[00:09:44] Speaker B: I don't know. Right now I think I'd rather be bored than my job. I get so easily overstimulated from people just being idiots all the way around, doing something ridiculous that they should not be doing. So.
[00:09:59] Speaker A: So I'm in a good place, definitely. I mean, I don't want to go back, but, like, this is why we created Work Drama, because, yeah, I need some of that drama. It was so fun just to, like, break up the day because, like, I mean, your job is a little different. Your day kind of changes around, right? You work with different individuals and stuff like that.
I mean, I was working in urgent care, and even though it was different patients, it was just like the same kind of like, I'm going into the room asking people the same questions and kind of like, it was very repetitive.
So all those little, like, bursts of, like, this little drama going on or like, something going down that was kind of like it broke it up and it was kind of fun, especially if I. I wasn't involved. That was the best part, so. And I usually wasn't, but I don't know. Work drama. We need your stories. We need you to send them in. Send them in.
[00:10:39] Speaker B: Send that shit in, bitch.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: Yes, Our email is workdramamail.com and send those in. We'll anonymize it. Nobody's gonna know it's you. You can anonymize it at your end. But we're also gonna anonymize, so no worries about getting caught out.
This is a safe space.
So send your stories in.
Subscribe to the podcast so you can get more. We'll be here every two weeks with a new story, some new drama, so that not only me, but we could all just be in this group, this work Drama. Group chat. This is what that is, what this is. So thanks for joining in. We'll see you in two weeks.
[00:11:14] Speaker B: Bye.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: That's it for today's episode of Work Drama. Today's Work Drama was read by Lizbeth Marquez with opinions, reactions, and group chat energy from provided by our resident instigator, Sharon Rodriguez.
Music for the show is by Danielle Zambo. Fairy tales. And a special thanks to Project Emo for letting us record this podcast in your studio.
If you've got your own workplace story you can't believe actually happened. Send it our way workdramail.com names changed, jobs protected.
This has been work drama where the meetings end but the stories don't.
