the belligerent unicorn, the inappropriate vampire, and other stories of Halloween at work

In honor of Halloween tomorrow, here are eight of my favorite stories about Halloween at work that have been shared here over the years.

1. The costume tradition

For close to 15 years now, dressing up as one of your coworkers has been a Halloween tradition where I work. It actually started when someone came dressed as me the first year. A year later, I waited until I saw what a coworker was wearing that day, got a co-conspirator to bring a matching outfit, and sat down next to them. People have worn the CEO’s face printed out as a mask. Nobody’s ever gotten offended by it, it’s just a strange tradition now. I think it has more to do with the culture and the intent than anything else.. our clones are in a spirit of fun and respect.

2. The skeletons

I was working from home on Halloween when an email was sent to the whole department about free Halloween goodie bags for everyone in the office. Which was then closely followed by an email explaining that the skeletons were not edible! I spent the rest of the day imagining different ways someone might accidentally eat a plastic skeleton.

3. The M&M’s

A company I worked for went all in for Halloween. Each department picked a theme to decorate their desks and wore costumes. There was a competition with prizes. Most of us in accounts were Type A ladies who shared a brainwave and completed each other’s sentences, etc. We decided to decorate our department like Candyland and dress up as M&M’s. The Candyland deskscape was magnificent and all of us showed up on October 31st with either a store bought M&M costume or a colourful sweatshirt with an M on it … except for our one new colleague. He showed up dressed up as Eminem. The look on our faces and his face as it dawned on all of us that we had verbally communicated all of the ideas, and he hadn’t put the candy and candyland theme together and literally thought we were all dressing up as Marshall Mathers!

So we decided for our contest presentation of the theme he would rap along to “Lose Yourself” while throwing out Candyland cards like money and we would all dance like his backup act while walking through the board game we’d built in our department. It was so amazing and we won the contest. People were laughing about it so much, and still talked about it years later.

4. The makeup

I was in my mid-twenties when I decided to try my hand at wound make-up. Nothing terribly grisly; just a gash on my forehead and some bruising that, if you looked too closely, probably had some sparkle to it because I definitely used eye shadow. I worked for a warehouse club at the time (think Costco, Sam’s, BJ’s, etc.), but I wasn’t customer-facing really, and since I was going to be spending the day in a tiny closet of an office by myself counting cash sent over from cashiers, I didn’t think the wound make-up would be a big deal.

Except that it was apparently more convincing at first glance than I realized. The first manager to see me that morning panicked momentarily because he thought I’d been injured, and, later, a coworker saw me and blurted out, “WHO DID THAT TO YOU?!” I ended up removing everything within the first couple of hours of my shift. (And I’m glad I did! Like, I wasn’t OFTEN customer-facing in that role, but I did have to help on the floor sometimes. I don’t know WHAT I was thinking.)

5. The face mask

During Covid, my division of my company (around 150 people spread around the country) started having monthly contests and the winner would be announced during our monthly team calls. In October, the contest was “show us your favorite mask” – you know, Halloween-themed. So, as a joke, I put on a clay face mask (the kind for skin care) instead of some monster mask and emailed a photo off to the coordinator with a snarky “does this count” lol. I hit reply-all accidentally. And realized it far too late to recall it. The only balm (uh, aside from the facemask) for my mortification was I tied for the win. Was it out of pity? Probably. Don’t care – I used that $10 Amazon card like nobody’s business!

6. The belligerent unicorn

For years, I worked in a landmark building in a major American city with very strict security protocols. We all had a badge with our photo and name on it that was verified by security every time we entered the building.

One Halloween, one of my colleagues came to work dressed up as a unicorn. He walked into the building with a full-on unicorn mask that completely covered not just his face, but his entire head. Security stopped him in the lobby and told him he needed to take the mask off before he went any further. My colleague refused to remove the mask, and instead showed security his badge with his name and photo. Security said, “That’s not enough. You need to remove the mask so that we can be sure that you are the same person in the photo.” My colleague continued to refuse.

This went on … for a while. Eventually building security called our office to explain the situation and asked for our help in resolving it. But it was no use. My colleague refused to remove his mask and refused to leave the building. At one point, he suggested taking a new security photo with the mask on so that his physical presence would match his security badge.

He never made it up to the office, not just on that day, but any day thereafter. He was fired for being a dick to the building security staff and showing terrible judgement for a simple request. He had always been a little weird, but I never expected him to die on the hill of wearing a unicorn mask into the building.

7. The inappropriate vampire

A receptionist at my old job wore a vampire costume that was equal parts sexy and horrifying. Her corset, booty shorts, fishnets, and thigh-high platform boots seemed to be at war with Hollywood-grade blood spattered all over her face and throat, dripping and congealing in hyperrealistic fashion. She had white-out contacts that completely hid her irises and reduced her pupils to tiny pinpricks. Her teeth interfered with her ability to enunciate, leading to confusion when she answered the phone, and she asked to be excused from mail duty, since all of the reaching and twisting associated with that task placed her at risk for wardrobe malfunctions. She went home at lunch.

8. The pumpkin carving contest

We had a pumpkin carving contest between departments, which went off nicely enough. Except we forgot how much the office cat loved pumpkin. And I mean LOVED pumpkin. Everyone’s jack o’ lanterns had chomp marks within hours. At the end of the day, all teams were supposed to either take theirs home or put it outside in the garden to compost. One team forgot. The cat ate three-quarters of it overnight. We gave them litter box duty as penance.

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