What was the most illegal thing your workplace has done?

Installed pirated versions of Windows on all employee and customer computers. We charged the customer for an os install and just used a cracker to activate it.

My old job stored chemical waste longer than what the law allowed in containers that werent labeled correctly. No one knew for sure what the waste was because the guy that was responsible for that before me would just mix different wastes together. The solvent fridge (just a normal fridge from the 90s against a wall in the prep area out in the open) had about 10 gallons of flammable liquids (old solvents and reagents from the 400 level labs and organic classes) and 3 one liter containers of 15 year old diethyl ether which is almost certainly chock full of organic peroxides. (These are explosive) There was another container of ~100g dinitrophenylhydrazine (DNPH) in the flammables cabinet no one paid any attention to for quite some time. It was a good thing that it never became dry as that would need to be handled by the bomb squad. (Previous guy found an old crusty jar of picric acid (a friction sensitive explosive) that resulted in the bomb squad coming to the lab. That shut down part of that campus until it was dealt with) And then theres a waste container that I found at one of the outlying campuses that according to the label, had nitric acid, ammonia and bleach which is... not great.

We had a little NAS in the office, tied into AD and everything. It was called "Hollywood". Its contents was "donated" by the staff lol.

Edit: Sorry about the acronyms peeps, my bad.

Daily pouring chemicals that require special disposal just down the sink instead.

Another one: inadequate ventilation for hazardous, carcinogenic chemicals that you are exposed to for the entiety of your shift every single day

Once had a manager instruct me to block an emergency exit with an extremely large piece of machinery. While the building was still full of customers.

I worked at a construction company for only one day. The owner kept on doing lines of coke in the office. He thought he was discreet but he was not.

I worked for a popular VoIP who violated tons of my rights with my disability. My manager would get nosey, then he'd dock my pay when I took my paid FMLA. They were always harassing me about coming in despite my job being pretty much 100% remote. I got a doctor's note for it, and I would get harassed daily about if I was coming in

When I went to HR to complain, the next day my desk was trashed.

I sued them, but lost on a technicality because my lawyer moved office and they didn't get a piece of paperwork in time, despite putting in a proper change of address

So I pretty much got screwed

A former employer committed tens of millions of dollars of wage theft across more than a decade. They settled a class action lawsuit last year with a payout of ~$6 million and a guy I worked with took them on directly and won $65,000.

I used to work IT at a company that leased electronic stuff to the general public. Oh boy were they shitty. Keep in mind, this is in a Western European country where employees and customers have actual rights.

There was a general policy of harassment and intimidation. Sexual harassment obviously. The female staff was constantly "ranked", outfits were loudly commented. By management.

Sometimes you manager came next to you at 6:25PM. You've already been doing free overtime by then but utterly stupid management means sudden, unpredictable and hard deadlines. He would lit up a cigarette in your face and keep you until 10PM. Sometimes the deadline was so short and "important" people had to work until 5AM. For free (well, pizzas). And show up the next morning at 10 (instead of 9, woo).

Managers kept threatening you to cancel your holidays the day before leaving if you didn't do this and that. Sometimes people had to connect from their vacations to do stuff because they were "critical" for something.

Money was a funny thing. We were constantly paid late. Sometimes more than 2 weeks late. Everyone who wasn't an employee wasn't paid at all. Not the rent, not the building staff (the toilets were FILTHY), not the contractors who remodeled the floor when we moved in, not the suppliers and especially not the IT contractors. I came in on day and found that I lost my entire team because their employers has never been paid.

One day, they lost a major investor because they lent money to purchase stuff to lease, not burning it in massive management salaries. As a collateral, the investor left with the customer database. So they were back to square one. So, as a get-new-customers-quick tactic, they created dozens of too-good-to-be-true promotions, like giving out electric scooters for new subscriptions and the like. With of course zero intention of honoring them out, since there was no money.

I could go on and on. Everyday there was new, shitty, borderline illegal stuff going on.

1 guy used a pirated piece of software and added it to a server which was then used to make an image for more servers so that pirated software was then proliferated out onto about half the servers in a Fortune 500 company.

Allegedly killed some babies and caused a nationwide shortage of baby formula.

I worked at a place that tried to use the private mails I wrote while at work against me in court. Where I am, that's a criminal offense.

Not so much "my workplace" but at one of the cafes I worked at, the owner was going through a divorce, and living temporarily in his office out the back. As well as having all sorts of power tools and shit lying around (one time I accidentally knocked over an angle grinder, which turned itself on and started spazzing out all over the concrete floor, spraying sparks everywhere and leaving a huge cut in my shoe), he was also dealing a not-insignificant amount of hard drugs out of that office.

Bitwise industries stole our last checks and our 401k money. And a massive amount of tax money.

I mentioned before that I worked for a guy who was high 24/7. It was a recording studio and he lived above it. There was always a bong in the kitchen surrounded by ground up weed. And law enforcement people would come in on occasion to record PSAs. He's damn lucky they never suspected he was high as fuck.

EDIT: This was Indiana in the 90s when weed was even more illegal here than it is now.

I'm sure this isn't the biggest thing, but I used to work at a big chain grocery store and "accidentally forget" to scan certain items. Old woman with a food stamp in her hand vs. u/spez-level arrogant billionaire CEO? You pay me $10/hr you fuckers, if you want me to notice the toilet paper in the bottom of the cart you'd better up my pay or help that chick out. I was far from the only one.

Basically credit card theft.

Over twenty years ago, when I was pretty young and inexperienced, I answered a newspaper ad for IT/programming at a so-called "startup." It sounded great.

My first day was in someone's living room-turned office and I didn't actually have any real idea what the business was. I was told it was a financial company, but it was taking off like gangbusters. Relatively quickly, within days actually, we moved into a very nice class-A office building. The owner was a remarkably charismatic man and being in his presence made you feel warm and understood and like you had a world of possibilities around you. I felt like a badass: I had a good-paying job, worked in a beautiful and prestigious office, and had a boss who made me feel great.

I found out, however, he was basically just running a scam. Between about 2-4am, he would have TV spots running, selling naive housewives, unemployment breadwinners, alcoholics, etc a "system" to earn huge sums of money very quickly. His system? You find people selling notes. You find people who want to buy notes. You introduce them and take a commission. A huuuuuuge commission.

Was that illegal? I don't know. I kind of doubt the people in the ads were real, but my paychecks were clearing.

I learned that when his sales people (who worked late at night, when the infomercials ran) took orders, they would record everyone's credit card info. Then, the owner directed us to automatically sign them up for things they didn't ask for -- recurring subscriptions to his membership-based "note marketplace" website. This was before the Internet was so mainstream, and many people buying this package didn't even have a computer.

If people tried to place an order, and one credit card was declined, he'd just have them quietly try another card we had on file for them, without asking. If anyone complained, they'd obviously just refund the whole charge to avoid pissing off the credit card companies, but he was really just hoping no one would notice.

I quit pretty quickly and got a "real" real job.

When GDPR just launched it took us a while to implement it as we had a really complex key-value database. We got so few requests though that we had a junior dev do it with couple of python scripts every few days or so lol

My workplace got busted for making bombs.

I once worked as a direct support specialist to support people with mental illness in the community. A hard job because a lot of clients would test how "loyal" you are to them (spoiler alert: I'm gonna support you 'til the end!)

I was just starting out and learning the ropes from these 2 people that had been helping out clients for a while. Some of the things they were saying they did with clients didn't seem to add up (not anything too alarming, but situations where I thought the client would need support and the DSS decided not to assist). But I was still learning so I didn't press the matter or report them.

But then after about a month I found I was the only DSS left. Turns out the 2 people I was learning from were taking part in all sorts of horrible abuse with the clients. Stuff like turning on the car's AC and radio full blast because it's "their car" (the client had paranoid schizophrenia, PTSD, and major trust issues before this happened).

So if you ever have family or friends who are working with DSS's, go ahead and let them help, but be mindful of anything that sounds "off." Talk to the organization about it. The right DSS will be glad you investigated.

Thankfully, my supervisor hired on 2 new DSS's who were absolute legends and whom I was able to learn from.

Asking me to say that I screwed up an analysis so that the company wouldn't have to log an Out Of Specification result. It was Patheon Softgels, a company that made softgel capsules with painkillers, fish oil etc.

Medicine meant for people and they treated quality as a joke.

I really should have reported them but I was too young and naive about that. I regret not having done that, however the company was well on its way to collapse thankfully..

Fortunately the company collapsed and was eventually bought over by some other big pharma company. I've heard it's been heavily reformed.

They told me as a 16 year old that I need to be careful because if I hurt myself they don't cover it. This was subway in 2012. I was unaware of workman comp laws.

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my old boss would pocket sales tax customers paid. In quickbooks you could just have check mark to say customer is taxable or not per invoice. he'd invoice the customers with sales tax, and they'd pay it. and before the end of the month he'd go in and turn all the check marks for the invoices off. company is gone now.

Well, it depends: I'm not sure if the reason Lehman Brothers went bankrupt is to do with all the shaddy business going on there and after they went *puff* they were hardly going to be investigated, now were they?!

Had a boss serve a steak he dropped on the floor. Maybe not illegal but a serious health code and ethical violation.

God! Which one to choose?

The electrical company that let a drunk work because "he had 20+ years of experience", which was rather dubious...

Or furniture retailers that had delivery drivers...read that again delivery drivers, drive drunk/stoned/coked out, and they were well aware they were.

Or people trying (Eh, let me be a little more specific...People certifying drivers) to drive in careers where people with mental issues should not be driving...(One guy I knew drove onto the shoulder chasing an oversize load with two bicyclers. He missed them, but god damn)...

Or my entire fucking family who don't realize I'm getting bad at driving, and expect me to drive regardless that I might get somebody hurt...(I get a lot of flack for that).

Almost every employer I've had in the last 10 years, has fliers and banners and all sorts of things dissuading you from talking about or forming a union. Which is at least illegal in my state. IDK about federally.

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They had a room full of younger folk that jokingly called themselves "the dick clickers" that would respond to incidents reported by users that got them and didn't want them.