What happens when lunch with an aspiring filmmaker takes a horrifying turn, a business meeting is held at a strip club, and one phone call exposes a financial scandal approaching $20 million? On Episode 12 of I Used To Work There, we have packed together one of our wildest lineups yet. From a workplace safety lesson that goes spectacularly off script to a $30,000 inventory discrepancy, rumours of an employee’s death, Cheetos beside a corpse, a coworker’s first Christmas present, a final goodbye from a familiar ghost, and one unforgettable encounter with a future murderer, these are the real stories people still cannot believe happened at work.

Every story you hear on I Used To Work There comes from real people and real workplaces because the truth is almost always stranger than fiction. Whether you have had a terrible boss, an unbelievable customer, a paranormal experience, or a day at work you will never forget, this show is built around stories just like yours. If you are enjoying the show, please follow us on your favourite podcast app, leave us a five-star rating and written review on Apple Podcasts, and text a link to someone you know who has an incredible workplace story.

🎙️ Have a story? You can submit it two ways.

Pull out your phone, open the Voice Memos app, tell us what happened, and email your recording to [email protected].

Prefer to be interviewed? Submit the guest intake form here: https://form.jotform.com/260164378157057

You can share your story openly or remain completely anonymous. Halloween is right around the corner, and we are actively looking for the scariest true workplace stories we can find. Haunted buildings, terrifying night shifts, unexplained encounters, creepy customers, or anything that still gives you chills years later. Both voice memo submissions and interview submissions are welcome.

If you've been looking for a way to support Foxx, Shelby, Kelly, and their family, the greatest gift you can give is sharing their GoFundMe. Every share helps their story reach someone new and means more than words can express.

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Have you seen the Journal?

The Journal.

Have you seen the Journal?

Have you read the journal yet?

And I'm going, what are you.

The Journal.

What are you.

I.

What are you talking about?

Like, I didn't even.

The two together that he was talking about the Edmonton Journal newspaper.

I was like, out of context, and I go, randy, calm down.

What's going on?

He goes, oh, this.

This guy.

John Doe.

The John Doe guy that came to our.

He's an ax murderer.

Is all over the front page of the Edmonton journal.

Welcome back to I used to work there.

My name is Kelly Kennedy, and before we get started, I wanted to give a very warm welcome to the more than 800 new Apple podcast followers who have joined us since our last episode.

Thank you so much for being here, and welcome to the show.

I used to Work There is built around real workplace stories from real people.

The funny ones, the unbelievable ones, the awkward ones, the disturbing ones.

And the stories that sound far too crazy to be true.

This show is about you, your workplaces, your co workers, your customers, your bosses, and the moments that have stayed with you long after the shift ended.

Halloween is right around the corner, and we are officially looking for your scariest, true workplace stories.

Haunted offices, unexplained encounters, terrifying night shifts, creepy customers.

Or the co worker who still haunts your memories years later.

If something frightening happened to you at work, I want to hear it.

You can share your story openly or remain completely anonymous.

Send a brief outline of your story to HR used to work there.com and we will get you onto a future episode.

On today's show, a workplace safety lesson goes spectacularly off script.

Before a training supervisor suffers an unforgettable wardrobe malfunction.

A young accountant discovers a $30,000 inventory discrepancy, only to be told that she is the problem.

An insurance agent learns that his clients have been told that he retired, became terminally ill and may not even be alive.

And an entire restaurant comes together to give one co worker the very first Christmas present he ever received.

Then, as we head over to the night shift, an insurance representative encounters a funeral director casually eating cheetos right beside a corpse.

A young employee is required to attend a business meeting at a strip club.

A familiar ghost named Emily says one final goodbye.

A phone call from an elderly woman asking where her money went exposes a financial scandal approaching $20 million.

And an investor sits down for lunch with an aspiring filmmaker before discovering that the horror movie he was pitching was far closer to reality than anybody could have imagined.

We have nine incredible Workplace stories for you today.

And it's time to kick off the day shift for our first story of the day.

It is my pleasure to welcome Tracy from Ohio to the show.

Tracy was only 22 years old when she found herself responsible for training a room filled with newly hired 18 year old men.

One unfortunate slip of the tongue was all it took to make sure that they would never forget their workplace safety training.

Unfortunately for Tracy, that was only the beginning.

Tracy, welcome to the show.

Tell us what happened.

Well, back in my college days, I worked at a very normal shipping company.

We'll leave it at that.

I was always planning on going into dentistry as my final career.

So when they offered more money for school to go into management, I was like, sure.

But this company was very rough on their employees, especially when you were a supervisor.

So I somehow weaseled my way into being in the training department instead of running an operations area.

Now this is a big giant, manufacturing, building, lots of parts and pieces going around.

And when a new employee gets hired, they are required to attend for the first week a training class.

Okay.

And I was the teacher of the training class.

So every night they'd come into the class, we'd introduce, you know, regulations, rules, safety, how to do your job, whether it's loading the semis to go out or unloading the semis to come in.

How to properly handle your.

Handle yourself.

Right?

Well, this class of guys, I'll never forget them.

And there was like five or six guys.

They were all 18 years old, rambunctious dudes, right.

I had to do the OSHA training video with them.

And there was a segment in the training video that said, you want to be careful to avoid grabbing packages and handling things to avoid cuts and punctures.

And in my head I'm thinking cuts, punctures, cuts, punctures.

If you can see where I'm going with this.

Because when I said it out loud and read the slide to the class and I said, you want to avoid cunts and punctures to this room of 18 year old boys, it was mortifying.

I had their attention though, so that was the best.

But I can't ever think of seeing one of these delivery drivers out there carrying a package that has those plastic straps on them.

And I'm like, you wanna avoid the cunts and punctures?

Oh my goodness.

They did not let me live it down.

No.

Wow.

Wow.

Oh my goodness.

Yeah.

It's like it's like, it's so easy to say the wrong thing.

Let me tell you as a podcaster.

Oh, I bet.

Cause you're, you're telling yourself, don't think about it, don't think about it, don't.

And then as soon as it came outta my mouth, I was like, cuts.

I said cuts.

Cuts and punctures.

And there was, there was no playing it off.

No, no, no.

But I bet you they were a lot less nervous after that.

Oh yeah, they definitely would always be like, hey, Tracy, you being safe?

And I'm like, oh, Lord.

I bet if I were to see any of those guys today, they'd still ask me.

So.

Lasting impression?

Well, you.

It's probably the first mispronunciation on the show, but likely not the last.

Yeah.

Thanks Tracy for an incredible story.

Appreciate it.

And.

Well, Tracy wasn't done yet.

Safety training continued to leave lasting memories.

Tracy, you have another story for us.

Tell us what happened.

Yes, thanks people.

If you've listened previously, which if you haven't, shame on you, you need to start listening to this podcast constantly.

The last story I told was about a shipping company I worked at in college where I was the training supervisor that taught the new hire employees for the first week how to do their job.

Great story, so go back and listen.

This does involve that same class of students though, just for some background.

If anyone hasn't listened to the last episode, they were like 18 year old guys.

And I had said some things that really caught their attention in the training class accidentally, a nice slip of the tongue.

But I had to go to the different areas of the building and show them how to do the job.

So you know, how to take the packages off of the semi trailers and get them into the intake system, how to move between the systems, how to take the packages that were outgoing and load them onto the semi trailer so they could be transported to the next area.

And the requirement for supervisors uniforms were green, green polo shirts with the logo on them and then khaki pants.

It could be any kind of khaki pants.

And the pants I wore this one day that's in question were these kind of really cream colored American eagle corduroys.

So they were like the flares and you know, a little tighter at the top but flared to the bottom.

And I was demonstrating to these five or six guys how to load packages in the semi trailer.

And there's certain requirements, you gotta turn the boxes a certain way, you gotta make them Fit.

You don't wanna throw anything because trust me, nobody ever throws or steps on any packages at the shipping company.

So I had bent down to grab a package and the ass of my pants split from the middle of my ass all the way down my thigh.

And I had already had this Freudian slip with these dudes and they were just cracking up and there was nothing I could do.

You know, you couldn't just like there were no spare clothes to wear around.

So this was also back before, I mean, things that were automated, but not as automated as they are now.

So we had these eight and a half by 11 sheets that were called load sheets so you'd know what packages went in that trailer.

And I had the guy, I was like, gimme that piece of eight and a half by 11.

I slapped it on my thigh.

I took a tape gun and just wrapped it around and half covered my ass that was hanging out and just went about my business like it was just a normal other day.

So these, yeah, these guys were really thrilled to have picked to work at when they did.

What can I.

What can Brown do for you there?

You know?

Wow.

Wow.

Well, I'm absolutely gonna share these stories back to back.

Cause they're hilarious and what a way to make a choice in a hard situation.

I mean, it happens, you know, it's like everybody farts, everybody poops, it's fine.

Like it is what it is.

That's right.

That's right.

Wow.

Well, thank you for another incredible story, Tracy.

Thanks.

Well, from some split pants and some quick thinking to a woman who was demoted for simply doing the job she was hired to do, it is my pleasure to welcome Amanda calling in from Idaho.

Amanda, thanks for listening.

Tell us what happened.

Hi, I love your podcast.

I just could listen to it all day.

So.

So my first job as an accountant was not great and I'm going to tell you why.

I was hired as an inventory specialist at a small business in town that makes aftermarket parts for off road vehicles.

And they sell bicycles too.

So their inventory involves a lot of moving parts, a lot of small parts.

And this business just started growing really quickly.

Their sales were going crazy and they were having even more moving parts, new machinery, thousands of orders which was new for them.

And they had this crazy Black Friday sale that just brought in the most insane amount of orders and they were hiring more and more salesmen and there were new people there that didn't really understand what they needed to do.

And I was trying to manage and keep track of all these sales and inventory going in and out in QuickBooks, which it was just a hot mess.

There was just the.

Not they didn't have the right capabilities that they needed for this kind of inventory.

So everything that was being sold online had to be input manually into QuickBooks to update the inventory system, which was often like not done correctly.

So I probably tried about.

For like six months just working full time trying to fix this mess and I just was lost.

I mean, it was my first accounting job for one, but for two, I just had like zero support from my manager.

Anybody there.

So it was just such a mess.

And at the end of the six months, I ended up telling my boss that there they were about $30,000 off between the numbers in the QuickBooks system and their physical inventory count that I did, which for tax purposes is a pretty big deal.

So I. I was pretty certain that the reason that all of this was so off was just human error.

Like the sales were entered in incorrectly because it was all done manually.

And.

Oh man, I mean, there's just so many reasons for, for that number to be so far off.

Like, there's.

The people entering in what we bought were probably entering it incorrectly or lost a paper here or there or duplicated a paper.

I mean, it just.

The list could go on forever.

All of the errors that were probably done that ended up coming up to that number.

So I didn't think it was my fault that, and I know that it was not my fault that those numbers were so off from each other.

I truly think I did my best to track things down and get the correct numbers.

And I still feel a bit bad about this and feel like maybe I could have done more.

But I mean, after.

After having many more years of experience under, under my belt at this point, I just think I was not in the right job.

I don't think the people that I was working with were doing things correctly and there could have even been some shady deals under the table.

I have no idea.

But there's.

I don't think there's any way I could have done anything better at this point in my career.

I. I just give myself a pat on the back that I got out of that job when I did.

So anyways, I. I told my boss everything that was going on and my recommendation for how to fix it.

Basically I said, you need a different inventory system.

You need to have a barcode system that everyone has to follow and to make sure that things aren't manually entered in incorrectly.

And you have to have to have a different accounting system that will connect with the.

Those sales online so things are done correctly.

And yeah, so basically my boss said, no, everything is going well at the company.

Everything's doing.

Every.

Everybody in the company is doing everything right except for me, that I'm the problem.

There's nothing we need to fix.

Everything's fine.

I just suck at my job, basically, is what he told me.

So.

And you know, he was, I, I do think, like, he looked at me as kind of being a woman not knowing what she was doing.

But also it was my first job as an accountant, so I just don't think he had much faith in me.

But, yeah, he just told me.

He just, you know, kind of gave me a lecture for a while and I was super upset.

And he said he didn't want me in charge of inventory anymore, but he was willing to keep me on as a general accountant helping with liabilities and taxes if I agreed to him docking my pay quite a bit.

I told him that that was crazy.

It was definitely not my fault.

And he was just like, I don't care.

I'm right, you're wrong.

I, I just was super upset.

I was, I cried for a while, but he, I, I didn't really have another choice.

So I stayed on and got paid less.

But the minute I went home, I applied for a new job and I got it within like three weeks and ended up getting paid like double at that job.

And I did so good at that job, by the way.

I got like, accommodation after accommodation promotion.

I was doing, I was rocking it.

So I do think that it matters who your manager is.

It's not, it may not be you if you're not doing well at your job.

It may just be your manager and the people you work with.

So, yeah.

Oh, and then after I left, I had a friend that was still working there and she let me know that they hired a man to do the inventory and he told them exactly what I did, that they needed an inventory system and they listened and implemented it.

So that's fun.

But anyways, thanks for listening to my story by.

Thank you for calling in, Amanda.

And I think you made the absolute right choice and I am happy that it went a completely different direction for you.

And yes, having a bad manager is absolutely the reason that most people leave their jobs.

So congratulations on making the right choice and making the right recommendation in the first place.

And of course, being a listener of the show.

Thank you, Amanda.

And for those of you listening.

This was just a listener submitted story.

So Amanda busted out her voice recorder on her phone, recorded this story and emailed it right over to me at hr, used to work there dot com.

And if you're sitting in a quiet place and you have a story that you would like to share with us, this is a great and easy way to do so.

So please pull out those phones, open up those voice recorders and tell us what happened to you or what you saw at work.

For our next story, it is my pleasure to welcome Joel calling in from Canada to the show.

And Joel had a fellow employee telling other people that he had died.

Yes, Joel, I'll let you tell the story.

Tell us what happened.

Well, I was working at a company many years ago and they had a, they brought in some new talent and quotation marks to, you know, up the business as they usually do.

And I've been in the business 47 years.

Back then I might have been in the 30 year plus range, but I had a fairly good clientele base.

And of course I tried to do life insurance review.

So one night I phoned one of my clients up and said, you know, I think it's time to review your shares.

Well, I've already done it and bought a new policy.

So I said, well, why would you go to somebody else?

Well, we were told you're not around anymore, you're sort of semi retired.

And I said, well, who told you that?

And they told me the name.

And I said, well, that's really funny because his office is two doors down from me, I'm still working.

She said, well, he never told me that.

So I went to the CEO of the company at the time, explained it to him.

He said, I'll go to him, tell him not to do it again.

Little while later, maybe a month, two months later, I phoned another client up.

Same thing happened.

So finally the boss said, that's it, it's it.

And he got out of there.

But the worst part is he's still in the business.

And I see him at conventions and of course I never say hello to him, but he's still around.

Guys like this should be thrown out.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Wow.

So did it ever happen again?

No, I've never had it happen to me ever again.

No, I've had the odd time where clients said they bought from me.

I haven't heard from you for a few years.

Well, that's fair game.

You know, you can't do everything with everybody.

But no, I was fine.

Wow.

Wow.

Well, I'm Sure.

You're not alone in that one, Joel.

There's crappy people everywhere.

Yeah, you know what?

It's just unfortunate that we have a lot of them in our industry.

We have people trying to steal clients.

So I'll give you a good example.

I left a company after 38 years.

They didn't terminate me.

But unfortunately, part of the contract that was signed at the time, when I joined them years ago, was that if I left, they kept all the clients.

They weren't mine, they were theirs.

Yeah.

Which is, you know, that's fair game.

So I couldn't speak to anybody because I had a non solicit contract.

Not a non compete, thankfully, but I couldn't phone anybody.

So I was getting phone calls from clients saying, happy retirement.

I'm glad to hear that you finally decided to stop working.

I said, what are you talking about?

Well, we spoke to somebody, took over the group plan.

This is all group insurance, not life.

And we were told you retired or I had one person phone me up and started crying on the phone and saying, you're alive.

And I said, not only alive, I'm very healthy.

She said, well, I was told you were sick and terminally ill.

So that's how the title of this book came across.

I'm not retired, I'm rewired.

And by the way, I'm still alive.

I'm not expired.

So you know what?

It doesn't matter where you are in our industry.

Like to go out and tell people that.

Which is an outright lie, but they were very smart.

They didn't put it in writing.

So I never had a case to go against them.

It was all a hearsay.

The only comeuppance that I got on that was I took back about 80, 85% of my clients.

And so they all stayed and came back with me eventually.

So we're fine.

Well, I'm happy that in the long run, it worked out for you, Joel.

Thank you so much for an incredible story.

Yeah, well, thank you very much.

Well, nothing quite like having your employers and fellow employees telling people you're dead so that they can steal your clients.

Thank you so much, Joel, for a wild story.

And from an incredibly wild story to one of the most heartwarming and touching stories that has been shared on this show yet.

It is my pleasure to welcome Ashantis from North Carolina, who had an incredible job working at a restaurant and an experience that will Stay with her forever.

Ashantas, tell us what happened.

So this had to be like 13, 14 years ago as a young college student working at Golden Corral.

I don't know if your listeners will know what Golden Corral is.

It's definitely a Southern style restaurant.

Okay.

But buffet style.

And so I just wanted to make some extra cash as a college student.

And so I would go into work, like, almost every weekend tired, and I would, like, get to know some of my co workers.

And I was like, okay, it's not that bad.

Like, I really like these people.

And so we had one coworker.

I can't remember his name, so let's just say Steven.

But he was kind of the annoying little brother type.

I just remember one day, like I said, I worked the front register, and so he was assigned by my managers to refill the ice because people, they would.

They would come in and get their drinks and then go to their tables.

And so instead of him taking the top off and like placing it to the side, he pushed it and it hit some customers and we were all like, oh, my gosh.

But we all had to, like, kind of cater around to him.

And so sometimes he would talk and we would be like, oh, whatever.

That's just Steven is what I'll call him.

And so one day he was up at my register and he was talking to me, and we would hear him talk about, like, his family a bit.

He would talk about his mom and how she lived in another state and how we.

He didn't really have a relationship with her.

And I'm very close to my family.

You know, us Southerners.

That's almost like, what do you mean?

Like, you're not close to your family?

But we never heard about any other family, just his mom, actually.

And so we would just listen from time to time.

But it was around Christmas time and it was a co worker of mine there, she was making us all little bracelets.

And he said, oh, thank you.

Like, I never got like a Christmas present.

And I said, what do you mean you never got a Christmas present?

I'm like, maybe 21 at the time.

And he, although he was like a little brother, he was a bit older.

And I said, what do you mean?

Like, you've never gotten a Christmas present?

So he began to tell me a little bit of his life story.

Story about like foster care and met his mom, like, later in life.

So I was like, oh, my gosh, that, like, touched my heart.

So I'm rallying around to, like, the managers and the servers and the other people that work in the front.

And I'm like, you guys.

Even the cooks in the dishwashers in the back.

And I'm like, you guys, like, we have to do something for him.

So we all put together some money, and this tells you how long ago it was, because he wanted.

I forgot how we asked him or how we got the information that he wanted one of those ipods.

Like, nobody uses those anymore, but he wanted an ipod.

And so we all gathered the money enough, gave it to the manager, and we put it in a bag.

So one day, you know, Golden Corral, we had, like, the little microphones at the top where I would announce people's birthdays.

And so I announced and told him to come to the front, and it was all of us there, and we just gave him a speech of like, hey, you know, you're such an amazing person, and merry Christmas.

And everyone around and said something, and he was crying.

We all were crying.

It just showed me that humanity and, like, people are just genuinely good and we care because as you if I say, he's like a little brother, he was like the annoying little brother, everybody would be like, oh.

But all of us distinctively care.

I don't know where he is today, but, oh, my gosh, if I could find him, I would be like, hey, do you remember that?

Like, do you need anything?

Do you need a hug?

Well, who knows, Ashantas?

Maybe he's listening right now.

And he's like, holy crap, that was me.

Yes.

Listen, hopefully I found you all the way in North Carolina.

That is just such an incredible story.

And, you know, we were talking briefly before the show, but, you know, I spent my time in serving as well when I was in college.

And while it's probably one of the hardest jobs on planet Earth, I always said I've never worked harder for less money, and I hold that to this day.

But it is the best group of people you will ever work with.

I will say you don't work in a restaurant because of the job.

You work in it because of the people.

And this is exactly why.

And what an incredible story.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Ashantis, for a great story, and I'm very much looking forward to more.

Perfect.

And with that, the day shift is over, and we are going to enter the night shift after a very quick sponsor break.

Welcome back to the show.

It is time to enter the night shift, and things are about to get a little bit darker.

For our very first night shift story of the evening, it is my pleasure to welcome Dan Calling in from Wisconsin with a very unusual story from one of his first jobs in insurance.

Dan, tell us what happened.

Kelly, thanks again for the opportunity.

This story that I wanted to share with you today was a.

Welcome to the insurance world.

Welcome to business insurance.

Welcome to business ownership.

I have been working in this industry about 10 years, and I work with small business owners.

And one of the industries that I work with is.

Is with funeral directors.

And I walk into this business one day, maybe a month into my career, and I walk through a side door.

The front door was closed.

We walked through different doors to kind of get to decision makers.

And off to the side, there's a door wide open.

And as I'm walking past, there's a guy sitting there eating Cheetos.

And I just see him eating Cheetos and his dog at his feet.

And he's eating Cheetos just kind of leaning against the wall in a shirt and a tie and a suit, looking real good, great shoes, nice watch.

Just sitting there eating some Cheetos with his dog at his feet.

And so I think, well, I'm gonna go talk to this guy, and I'm gonna introduce myself and talk about my company and.

And learn about him and get to know him.

And as I walk in, I see him, and out of my peripherals, played a lot of sports.

They got some peripherals.

There's a naked man, a dead man lying on a table over here, right?

That's part of being a funeral director.

But I had never seen a dead body before, and definitely not like that.

I've been in a lot of locker rooms, so unfortunately, I've seen some things that I don't want to see.

YMCAs and such.

And you know what I'm talking about.

Everybody does this listening.

And yeah, there's just a body over here with no sheet over it of a guy.

Just.

He's dead, right?

And here there's this guy eating Cheetos.

And as I'm talking to him, he starts licking his fingers.

He starts licking his fingers and then.

Goes to shake my hand.

And since it's the first time that I've ever met him, and I want to make a good impression, and I don't want to freak out because this is what he does every day.

I shook his hand.

I shook his hand and the dog sitting at his feet.

And again, he's eating, licking the Cheetos dust off his fingers and shook his licked hand with this guy here.

And that is one of those memories that you can't make up that I'll never forget that was welcome to the industry moment.

Oh my gosh.

Well, first off, thank God for funeral directors.

Right.

They have a job that like most of us can't even imagine.

And the fact that like it can be a normal day at the office, you're just chilling, there's a dead body in the corner and you're eating Cheetos is pretty incredible.

Yeah.

That was his lunch break, I guess.

Right.

Just, just things that we can get used to.

Right.

Like things as humans that we can get used to is almost unbelievable.

Yeah.

Think about how many people don't even like seeing their own blood or blood at all.

And then you've got people that just draw blood out of people.

Or my brother in law who is, is in the trauma, he's a trauma nurse and he loves that kind of thing.

And me, I want nothing to do with any of it.

But funeral directors is one of those professions where I think it's got like the highest depression rate.

It's very, you deal with people that are grieving all the time and fighting families and you see the worst of people.

You get, you get bodies in and people in that have passed away in really horrific, tragic ways.

I can't even imagine that profession.

So to him that was probably like, hey, this guy passed away from old life and this is just another day at the office.

This is a good one, a relaxed one.

Right.

And for me it was, it was welcome to the funeral director industry.

Yeah, absolutely too.

Yeah.

And just like one of those experiences you'll never forget.

Not at all.

Amazing.

Dan.

Well, thank you for another incredible story.

My funeral directors out there, if you're hearing this and you have a story, we would love to hear it.

Thanks again, Dan.

Thanks brother.

Appreciate you.

Well, when you work in insurance and you're working with funeral homes, you gotta expect to at some point maybe see a dead body or two.

But what happens when you're just working a job but your boss is a total perv and insists that you have company meetings at a strip club.

Well, our next caller is going to tell you.

Our next caller is an anonymous Canadian caller.

Tell us what happened.

Well, I was in my very early twenties and the only female at an office with a handful of middle aged men.

I was doing work that wasn't really, really skilled work but they required an administrative, you know, touch to it.

And it became very apparent very early on in my employment there that my boss had, was interested in, you know, physical relations.

We'll say he wanted to sleep with me and he made that Very clear.

And it was very, very uncomfortable for me to be in the office with him because I wasn't interested.

And.

But as a early 20something woman in an office of middle aged men, it's very hard to be able to push back, you know, and, you know, draw those professional lines.

I think what came to a head for me was when they were hosting business meetings that I was required to attend at a strip club by the office.

Wow.

So it was exceedingly uncomfortable for me because I was sitting in this.

In this strip club with these middle aged men and, you know, naked women.

And it wasn't really exactly the classiest strip club in Edmonton either.

Not that it matters, but it was kind of gross and nasty and the middle of the afternoon.

Like, who even goes to a strip club in the middle of the afternoon on a random Thursday?

But anyway, it was so, so gross.

And anyway, gave me the ick.

And needless to say, I was let go not long after that because it was just one of those insurmountable issues.

My gosh.

Holy cow.

Well, that is the first strip club we've had on the show so far.

Oh, my gosh.

I like, I honestly can't even believe that.

It's like, sorry, you don't meet the company culture of we go to strip clubs at lunch.

Right.

It was so.

This isn't gonna work out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Terrible.

Wow.

Okay.

Well, I'm thankful you got out of there and thank you so much for coming on and sharing the story with us.

Anytime.

Thanks.

From gross bosses back to New Jersey.

It is my pleasure to welcome Brittany back to the show.

Thank you.

Who had told us a story about her time at the Flanders Hotel and a ghost named Emily who she had had some experiences with while her time at the Flanders was coming to an end.

She thinks that Emily may have found a way to say goodbye.

Brittany, welcome back to the show.

Tell us what happened.

Hi, Kelly.

Brittany here.

After our call, I realized I completely forgot to tell you about how Emily the ghost said goodbye to me on my last day of work and just thought it was a fun little additive to the story.

And I couldn't believe I forgot.

So Emily the ghost, who again, was the main ghost at the Flanders hotel that, you know, I claim to have built a friendship with over my five to six years of working there.

You know, we had an understanding of each other.

I respected her when she came around and she respected me.

Not to scare me out of my skin too much, um, but I thought it was really interesting that, you know, I. I believe she said goodbye to me on my last day at work.

So on my last day, I clocked out, you know, I said goodbye to everybody in the office.

And I was leaving, walking through the lobby.

And in the far corner of the lobby, we had an employee only door that led to a corridor that led straight out the back to the employee parking area.

It was a very plain hallway, just white walls all the way down.

And then it would branch off into other hallways to some back areas of offices and the restaurant area.

But there's really not much in this hallway there.

So if you were in the lobby and you went to the far corner, you open the door and just walk down this long white hallway to the parking lot to leave for your shift from the night.

And that's how I left after I clocked out for my last shift.

And when I opened up the door to that hallway, the light flickered.

And I thought, well, that's odd.

And I just started my walk through this hallway out to the back door.

And as I walked down the hallway, every light, which is probably about like 3 or 4ft in distance from each other, flickered over top of me as I was leaving.

And I didn't think much of it until I actually got to the back door and went to open it and thought that was very strange.

I turned around and looked and none of the lights were flickering anymore.

And I said, that's weird.

They just each flickered over top of me as I left and I shut the door.

And as soon as I shut the door, I went, oh, my gosh.

It was Emily saying goodbye.

Because that was one of the things she played with the most were the light switches and as I mentioned in the past, the chess pieces out in the lobby.

But the lights and the switches, she always was playing with the lights.

And I totally convinced that that is how she said goodbye after our five years of friendship.

And I ran back in the front door and I told my manager and I said, pulled up on the cameras, pulled up on the cameras, because the hallway was recorded.

And yeah, yeah, it was a very interesting thing to watch too.

Each light flicker as I leave on the cameras.

But that is how Emily the ghost said goodbye to me my last shift that I worked with her when I left the house hotel.

So thanks again, Kelly.

Hope to talk to you soon.

Thank you, Brittany.

And for those of you who are maybe finding this show for the very first time, I absolutely love a great ghost story, a great unexplained story.

And obviously with Halloween coming up right around the corner, we would love to get more of your haunted workplace stories or stories of things that you can't explain to this day.

So, Brittany, thank you so much for sharing that with us.

Very much looking forward to hearing more.

And our next story takes us from a haunted hotel to a fraud on a level that is almost unimaginable.

It is my pleasure to welcome an anonymous Canadian caller, and you are about to see why.

Welcome to the show.

Tell us what happened.

Anonymous Canadian here.

I want to take you back, I guess, to the beginning of my career in.

I had just been promoted to having my own office, doing some training with the senior advisor sitting in the office next to me.

And it only been about a year where I had sat next to this individual.

You know, he had some family members in the office as well.

It wasn't a huge populated office, so he had stepped out of town.

Unfortunately for me that day, I was responsible for picking up his phone calls.

And in picking up his phone calls, I received a call from a little old lady.

And the little old lady had asked where her money was.

I should preface this by saying I worked in the finance space where we were responsible for managing people's money.

Therefore, I needed to get some personal information, name, number, emails, all sorts of things from this human being.

I proceeded to type the information that was given to me into the business partner or the other advisor's computer.

And I didn't see this human being's name anywhere in this story or anywhere in this computer system.

Oh, no.

What we ended up finding out, unfortunately, was that this human being, this nice old lady, had opened up a can of worms where this person, we learned, had a bit of a gambling problem, I think, as it seemed, and was collecting client funds and using them for his own gambling purposes.

Oh, my gosh.

When you started pulling back the layers, it turned out there was people in the office who he had taken advantage of.

There was clients, non clients, all sorts of people.

I think by the end of it, we had learned there was close to about $20 million.

Holy shit.

This wasn't a small embezzlement.

This had been going on, we learned, and if we found out the first person, it had been going back about 10 years previous to us finding out what went on.

So the, the worst part about it was it made work for everybody else.

Obviously the worst part for the clients was they had to go through it.

Luckily, there is restitution.

So I do want to say, anybody who is a Canadian, you know, sort of listener, should someone steal from you, such as the person in the office next Door did to many of the clients at this large publicly traded Canadian company.

You will be reimbursed if you kept the proper receipts and you can prove fraud.

Advisors who are licensed do have insurance.

Okay.

The sad part though was that there were a number of people, whether it was family or there was other advisors who had trusted this person to act with integrity, simply didn't get reimbursed.

If you are, you know, a family member or a position that you should know better, the standard channels do not really apply in terms of being reimbursed.

So after I would say about 100 different people, seven to eight year criminal sentence, the figuring out how many people were involved, it was an additional year's worth of work that one year into the industry.

That was sort of my, that was my entrance, let's say.

Talk about an initiation.

Yeah, it was, it was definitely something that you only hear about and it's not something we traditionally see with the Canadian environment.

And we do a great job covering these things up as institution.

So I am no longer with that institution.

I, I will say they did a great job at reimbursing clients, but as I mentioned, there were some people who are out of pocket.

That individual served his time is since back out.

So just be mindful who you're doing business with.

Always type a name into Google, make sure that there's nothing criminal and, or pressing that should come up.

But the sad part also is, is ruining the family name a little bit because his son worked in the office, there was other family members involved and it really did for a very long time make people look funny at one another because of one person's indiscretions.

And I think that's the saddest part is you, you think you know somebody and you think you can trust somebody.

It also speaks to the fact that just because it's a big name doesn't really mean anything.

Behind every big name and in Canada, advisors are still just human beings.

So no matter how big the person is or the company is, you still have to be working with somebody who acts with integrity.

And I think that's the biggest part and why I really like this, you know, this conversations we're having on this channel and this pod is because we're speaking to a guy behind all of it who really just is a genuinely upstanding human being who as much as there's some juice and some gossip, it's being used to protect people as well.

I think it's absolutely critical to get these stories out to the world.

And I Completely understand wanting to stay anonymous for this story and given your background.

But yeah, it's one of those things where we need a place to be able to share the truth, the realities of work, and I hope that we're able to do that with this show.

I have no doubt.

I've been a listener from the beginning.

I love to see its growth.

I have had the privilege of listening in on many of the calls just through the pod itself.

And it really is eye opening to hear that people of different backgrounds, ethnicities, religion, shapes, sizes, wherever they come from, the one thing that makes us all human is we all have experiences that you don't really necessarily know until you've heard it from, you know, the, the, the mouth of the.

The recipient.

And I think it's important to share stories because that's ultimately what brings us together around the campfire, around the kitchen table, whatever you want to call it.

Life is really just a collection of stories, and the future is often shaped by the past.

It did very much change who I was as an advisor.

It made me that much more compliant, that much more diligent about the relationships and as well with the partnerships and the, the people I put my name beside.

Because if I had been there a little bit longer and if I had been part of the, you know, that peer group or that network of human beings, I today might be living a very different life because of the actions of somebody else.

Absolutely.

Well, thank you for the work you do.

Thanks for sharing the story and hope to have you back soon.

Absolutely.

Thanks, buddy.

I still can't wrap my head around the level and scope of that fraud.

It just absolutely blows my mind, but it does not blow my mind as much as our final story of the evening.

For our final night shift story of the evening, it is my pleasure to welcome Randy back from Guadalajara, Mexico with a story that blew my mind.

Randy, welcome back to the show.

Tell us what happened.

Well, I used to work there at a place called Meridian Merchant Capital where I was one of the two managing directors.

And part of my job was to become a member of what was originally called the Venture Alberta Forum and eventually became the VA Angels and still exists today as Valhalla Angels.

And what it was, it was a club for investors.

So we would pay an annual fee and 12 times a year we would go to a presentation where early stage companies, startups would vie for to pitch us for investment.

So it's like an angel angel investors club.

And essentially it was Shark Tank before there was Shark Tank.

Okay, so it was, it was Very, very cool.

And so I really enjoyed going.

And my role there was to not only look for companies to invest in, but also look for companies that we may be able to become an advisor to.

So this is a long time ago.

We were, you know, we were, we had a regular forum.

There's three or four companies pitching.

And this, this gentleman, maybe in his early 30s, you know, kind of well dressed and very personable.

We're going to call him John Doe because, mind you, this is a true story.

So anybody could probably look this up.

It was in the news.

Okay.

So he, he got up and did his presentation and turns out he's a aspiring movie producer.

Director, Reindeer actor.

And so he did his pitch and, you know, he said that he was going to create a horror film about an axe murderer that would invite.

Lure people to his garage thinking that they were coming to, to meet.

He would pretend to be a woman and he would lure people using the Internet back then, chat rooms or whatever it was, and the person would show up and they would be murdered.

And he was going to make a movie about that.

Yeah.

And so there was, and at the time, there was a lot of movies that had come out that were low budget that had, that were horror movies that had done quite well.

Yeah.

Like, you know, mean, it's funny, Randy, I'm going to pause you there just because I'm from that time.

Yeah.

And I've got a story for another time about the Saw movie and the producer of that.

But anyway, that's another for another day.

So he did his pitch and he was looking for.

I forget he wasn't looking for a lot of money because he said he had a distribution deal in place with a big Hollywood company and so on and so forth.

So anyway, he did his pitch.

We all asked a few questions.

I had questions.

And the way it would work is once the person pitched, they would leave the room and then the angels would discuss it among themselves.

So that's where it was different from Shark Tank.

Okay.

And, and so as soon as he left the room, there's like 15 or 20 angels in there and they all simultaneously look at me.

Because I was in the film and television business over the years and they're like, what do you think?

You know?

So I said, well, I don't know.

I mean, we were in Calgary, Alberta, and he was from Edmonton, Alberta, and the leader of the Forum, another guy named Randy, says, well, he, he pitched up in Edmonton and he's already raised a couple hundred thousand.

A couple of guys have already gone in, so they must have done their due diligence.

And so, however, the group basically said, well, it sounds kind of interesting, but would you mind leading the due diligence on this, Randy?

And I said, well, I would have to, I'd have to spend some time with him.

But yeah, I don't mind.

I'm going up to Edmonton anyway next week, okay?

So I said, okay, I'll just go, I'll.

I'll meet him for lunch and ask him a few questions.

I knew that, I knew that I wasn't personally interested, but I didn't mind helping the other guys that thought, oh, we wouldn't mind getting into a movie deal, okay?

So I go up to Edmonton, I contact him.

And this is a really weird part in retrospect, one of many weird parts is I was meeting a young female entrepreneur who was really doing amazing things in Edmonton, and I was just sort of meeting her to mentor her or see what's going on.

Wonderful woman, maybe around that age.

And I thought to myself, well, I'll set up the two meetings back to back so that I'll have my lunch with her and then he can come and join us and they can meet each other and then she can go on with the rest of her day.

So maybe there'll be a good connection for each other.

So we did that.

She, I don't know what happened.

She was very nice with him, whatever, but she just left.

Maybe she got a bad feeling from him, I don't know.

So I sat with him and I asked him questions and it became quite clear to me fairly quickly that this guy was not on the up and up, okay?

Because he promised to produce this distribution deal, which he never did.

Like, he was supposed to bring the actual document to the meeting.

So that was a red flag.

He also, you know, I, I quizzed him about, well, how are you, you know, while you're doing this, how are you making ends meet?

Turns out, like he was living at home and he was, you know, he had been working as, you know, I don't know what it.

But it wasn't necessarily Walmart, but something like, like Being a Walmart greeter or something.

And he told me he'd gotten fired from that.

Okay.

So, you know, 15 minutes into it I'm thinking, okay, you know, and I was nice and kind to him, you know, gave him encouragement and so on and so forth.

So the next venture Alberta form or VA Angels meeting, I reported back that I was recommending against the deal and the Randy guy that was leading the forum said, well, yeah, okay, I guess none of us are going to do it.

But yeah, these guys put 200,000 in in Edmonton.

They're part of the same group.

So I never thought anything of it.

Never followed up.

We never heard anything more about it.

And I guess maybe a couple of months later I'm actually down in Tampa Bay.

And I was working on the acquisition of the Tampa Bay Lightning NHL hockey team by some investors.

Ironically, one of them was the original funder of the Saw movie.

Oh my gosh, that's just an aside.

Name's Oren Poolis.

Anyway, yeah, so we're in a hotel, it's a Sunday morning, my wife is with me.

We'd had some meetings there and it's like 8:00' clock in the morning, maybe 8:30 Eastern Time.

And my cell phone rings.

Yes, we had cell phones back then, Kelly.

I think it was probably a flip phone.

Yeah, I had one too.

Yeah, my phone rings and I looked down and I had call ID.

Right.

It's like Randy from the VA Angels.

And I quickly do the math.

It's like 6 in the morning, 6:30 in the morning in Edmonton on a Sunday.

Okay.

Yeah.

And I'm thinking, what the hell is he calling about?

So I answer and he's like, randy, have you seen the Journal?

The Journal?

Have you seen the Journal?

Have you read the Journal yet?

And I'm going to.

What do you.

The Journal?

What are you.

I.

What are you talking about together that.

He was talking about the Edmonton Journal newspaper.

I was like out of context and I go, randy, calm down, what's going on?

He goes, oh, this, this guy, John Doe.

The John Doe guy that came to our.

He's an ax murderer.

It's all over the front page of the Edmonton Journal.

They just arrested him.

I'm like, what?

And I thought to myself right at that moment because I remembered the, you know, the, the premise of the movie.

Yeah.

And I thought to myself, wow, I'm glad I didn't agree to meet him in his garage, his little studio that he was renting a garage from somebody.

Holy Cow.

So.

So it came out after that.

He was actually an axe murderer.

Like, he wasn't just a horror movie buff.

No, he had.

And the only reason he got caught is because he lured someone in there and killed the guy.

Okay.

And then chopped up the body.

Oh, my gosh.

And threw it down a sewer in north Edmonton.

Holy cow.

And then he did it again, but this time the guy managed to get away.

The second victim managed to get away.

And that second victim was so embarrassed that he had been lured to meet up with a woman or a prostitute or whatever it was.

He was just like a guy and like a, you know, blue collar worker type of guy.

He never reported it.

Wow.

To the police because he.

He managed to get away, but he was so embarrassed of the circumstances, he never reported it.

So, you know, there's a book written about this and there's an episode of.

Of a major, you know, TV crime series.

This.

This is.

This has been documented, obviously.

So anybody that wants to, you know, hear the whole gory details of it and.

And the story of how the police.

The Edmonton police service managed to piece it all together was, you know, it's one of these one, you know, fantastic, you know, true crime stories.

So.

Holy cow.

You know, so how did you feel after that?

Like, obviously you'd sat down and had an entire lunch with this guy.

Oh, yeah.

No.

And.

And, you know, I kind of liked the kid.

You know, he was ambitious and I thought he was delusional.

Right.

And then once I found out, there's probably no.

And, you know, we did let the other.

There was, I think three investors, or I forget the details, out of Edmonton.

We let them know.

And I actually asked Randy when I was on that initial call or maybe at the next meeting or something, you know, what happened.

I guess these guys lost their money.

The funny thing is they never lost their money because the money was.

Somehow he got caught so shortly afterwards that he hadn't even spent the money.

Wow.

And he was trying to claim his innocence and trying to look like a good guy.

So the money was actually returned to the investors, which was a bizarre part of the story.

Wow.

So it was just a lesson for me about, you know.

Well, I've actually never thought I was a very good judge of character because I. I'm such an optimist.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I kind of love, you know, I kind of see that, you know, my.

My own slogan is I see more in people than they see in themselves.

Yeah.

And that can.

That can.

That can be a mistake because there Are, you know, there are evil people, there's evil in this world.

So.

Yeah, yeah.

So there's a.

There's a humorous aspect to this, which is obviously for the.

For the fellow that was murdered and his family, and for the other fellow that eventually came forward and gave the evidence that got the guy convicted, you know.

You know, my heart obviously goes out to.

To him.

And, you know, there are.

You can always see the humor in any situation.

So it became kind of a regular thing at the VA Angels, the Valhalla Angels meetings going forward.

I ended up starting a group in Kelowna and then in Phoenix.

So.

And we would all, you know, you'd have really good presentations, and you'd have really not so good presentations or some deals that you like or you don't like.

You don't think they're going to go anywhere.

And we'd always say if it was kind of a lousy presentation that we didn't want to invest with, we'd say, well, it's not the worst deal that ever came to us.

It's not an axe murderer.

But then you never really know, do you, Randy?

Exactly.

So.

Wow.

Well, yeah, there has not been a story like that on the show yet, Randy, so thank you so much.

I'm.

I'm.

I mean, I know you personally, so I'm so happy that you are still with us and that you didn't fall prey to this guy.

Wow.

Wow.

Bizarre.

I still.

I mean, it's one of those things that even when I look back on it today, I think, did that really happen?

Like, wow.

So, anyway, thanks for allowing me to share that bizarre story.

Very bizarre.

And then I can tell you more about the Saw movie guy another time.

Okay, well, we will absolutely have you back.

Thank you for another incredible story, Ryan.

Congratulations, Kelly, on everything that's.

That's going on with this.

With this podcast and prayers for your son.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And with that, we have reached the end of another wild episode of I Used to Work There.

Thank you to every storyteller who has trusted me with their experience today.

This show exists because real people are willing to share the moments from work that they have never forgotten.

Before you go, I have one simple request.

Please text a link to this episode to one person you know who has an incredible workplace story.

You know exactly who that person is.

It's a friend, co worker, family member, or former boss who always tells the same unbelievable story.

Whenever everyone gets together, send them this episode and tell them I want to hear it.

Halloween is right around the corner.

And we are actively looking for the scariest, true workplace stories we can find.

Haunted buildings, terrifying night shifts, unexplained encounters, creepy customers, or anything that still gives you chills years later.

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Until next time.

My name is Kelly Kennedy.

This is I used to work there and we'll see you on the next shift.

SA.