The Weird Funny Things Found in Employees' Desks

[DawnStorm]

The article is here: https://wtop.com/local/2019/01/we-st...otos/slide/37/

The local news station is moving to new digs. Of course that means cleaning out desks, cabinets, etc. The cutout of the football player's head is really creepy. Some of the items haven't been used in years.

[Die Capacitrix]

I am counting down to my coworker's retirement as he has stacks and stacks of instruction manuals for outdated software and years of industry magazines. It'll be interesting to be able to see over the stacks on his cabinet.

[WildaBeast]

At my old job we had a technician who worked for us in our lab. After he left we were cleaning out the drawer in the lab where he kept his stuff, and we found moldy sandwiches, unrefrigerated Hot Pockets, and some of those temporary checks that banks give you when you open a new account.

[DawnStorm]

Originally Posted by Die Capacitrix

I am counting down to my coworker's retirement as he has stacks and stacks of instruction manuals for outdated software and years of industry magazines. It'll be interesting to be able to see over the stacks on his cabinet.

Reminds me of what was found in the next-door neighbor's house after his suicide. (this was back in 1982): 2 tons worth of technical manuals, technical specs, publications of that nature in his attic. It was a wonder the house did not collapse! I know this because the deceased's niece and her family had the dubious honor of clearing it out and hauling it to the county dump (for lack of a better term), where, due to the load, the truck had to be weighed before and after it was unloaded.
I had a boss who was once written up by the safety department for the gerbil heaven that his office was. Old phone messages, notes, journals and god-knows-what-else was all over that area.

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

Originally Posted by DawnStorm

due to the load, the truck had to be weighed before and after it was unloaded.

That's normal procedure at our transfer stations. You pay by the ton.

Seaboe

[dfresh]

A leader of one group here just walked out one day, so another guy had to take his position and started going through the VERY messy office. There were project files from over ten years before, messages left by clients from years ago, a lot of phone messages and email message from clients asking for work to be done, regulatory paperwork that had to be turned in months earlier. Unsurprisingly, a lot of those clients were not receptive to our doing the work when we finally got back to them, and it took the new guy over a year to get the group working properly again.

There were also a couple of burgers and some sandwiches buried in the piles of paperwork. That just made it extra special.

[RichardM]

I will confess to finding a sweet roll under a pile of drawings once in my office. It was only a week old though.

[Lainie]

In 2010, I found a box of old disks in a workstation I was moving into. One of them was a Pagemaker program disk from before Adobe bought it. Based on a quick google, that disk was 15 years old. There were other disks with data on them, gods know what data and whether it was confidential. I carried the box over to an admin and asked her to make sure they were destroyed.

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

Okay, I confess I have in storage a ton of old media (mostly 3.5" disks and CDs), but they all contain material that is subject to a document retention order. So I have a good reason not to destroy them (plus, most of the disks are in ascii, and are still readable).

Seaboe

[DrRocket]

Back in 2002, the powers that be decided a contract worker wasn't, so they gave him his walking papers. Gave him 30 minutes to clean out his desk before he was escorted to the door. I remember he was really upset about how it all went down. Fast forward a week, and we noticed a foul odor that we couldn't quite locate the source of. A couple of weeks after that, the boss asked me to look for some files in ex-contractor's desk. I opened the big drawer, and found a heavily discolored Taco Bell bag. One corner had split open, and "stuff" was oozing out. I simply closed the drawer again, informed the boss as to what I'd found. Later that day, someone from maintenance, wearing a dust mask and industrial duty gloves showed up, removed said drawer, and took it away to have it steam cleaned.

No doubt in my mind he did it on purpose. From talking with him about various things, it's exactly the type of thing he would have done.

All this time since, I'd thought it was a unique thing, but from what I've read here, apparently not.

[Lainie]

Originally Posted by Seaboe Muffinchucker

Okay, I confess I have in storage a ton of old media (mostly 3.5" disks and CDs), but they all contain material that is subject to a document retention order. So I have a good reason not to destroy them (plus, most of the disks are in ascii, and are still readable).

Seaboe

Also, you presumably know where they are. The disks I found had been forgotten.

[WildaBeast]

Originally Posted by Seaboe Muffinchucker

Okay, I confess I have in storage a ton of old media (mostly 3.5" disks and CDs)

This isn't work related, but at home I still have boxes of 3.5" floppies on the shelf by my computer. Some of them contain old college assignments. Many contain 1990s era computer games. I have no idea why I keep them; I haven't even owned a computer that had a floppy drive in at least a decade. (Maybe I'll want to play Doom II again someday!)

Originally Posted by DrRocket

Back in 2002, the powers that be decided a contract worker wasn't, so they gave him his walking papers...

I didn't go into detail before, but that was the situation with the technician that left the sandwiches and Hot Pockets in his drawer. He tended to be rather "flakey" though (which was the reason he no longer worked for us) so in his case it wouldn't surprise me if he actually forgot that stuff was in there.

[UrbanLegends101]

Originally Posted by DawnStorm

2 tons worth of technical manuals, technical specs, publications of that nature in his attic. .

I realize back in 1982, things were perhaps a bit different, in terms of being able to get the word out, and depending on the subject matter of those manuals, it certainly could have been a treasure trove of material for those who had equipment, but no original manuals.

[DawnStorm]

IIRC, the person was a patent office examiner.
Dr. Rocket--thank god this person did not return with guns ablazing!

[thorny locust]

Originally Posted by UrbanLegends101

I realize back in 1982, things were perhaps a bit different, in terms of being able to get the word out, and depending on the subject matter of those manuals, it certainly could have been a treasure trove of material for those who had equipment, but no original manuals.

Again depending on the particular manual, but some of them are still in demand.

Doesn't sound like he had an attic full of manuals for old farm equipment; but, if anybody does, I'd advertise them, not throw them out.

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

Originally Posted by thorny locust

Doesn't sound like he had an attic full of manuals for old farm equipment; but, if anybody does, I'd advertise them, not throw them out.

Indeed. My cousin Scott made his living selling International Harvester manuals.

Seaboe

[kitap]

My former co-worker refused to get rid of the how to manual for night audit when we used a different computer program. The first thing I did when he quit was toss it.