Workplace Horror

Heya Tom, it's Bob from the office down the hall
Good to see you buddy, how've you been?
Thing have been OK for me, except that I'm a zombie now
I really wish you'd let us in
I think I speak for all of us when I say I understand
Why you folks might hesitate to submit to our demand
But here's an FYI: you're all gonna die screaming!

—Jonathan Coulton, "RE: Your Brains"

A job can be stressful. There's annoying coworkers, demanding bosses, low wages, and ghosts and demons trying to murder you during your shift. Despite everything, your job is supposed to be mundane and not something to fear for your life.

Workplace Horror is a subgenre of horror where someone who's just trying to do their job may find themselves in mortal danger while supernatural (and sometimes not so supernatural) entities are trying to kill them. Why the character doesn't just quit their job is usually not explained or is Hand Waved as the character really needing the money.

The character will usually try to continue doing their work tasks even as it gets harder and harder for them to survive. It may be the First Day from Hell on the job, there may be a demon slowly possessing them, a homicidal animatronic hunting them, or a stalker closing in on them; but the floors aren't going to sweep themselves.

Usually the horror stays in the workplace, but it will sometimes follow the protagonists home.

Contrast Hunter of Monsters, where hunting the horrors is itself the job.

A popular genre for Survival Horror games.

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Examples:

Alternate Reality Games

• Omega Mart: The employee training videos are about teaching new hires how to get through a shift at the surreal grocery store, which includes confusing mind-broken customers into buying things, dealing with potentially equipment-destroying messes, and taking breaks when they start to feel disoriented from reality.

Comic Books

• Any story in the Batman mythos that focuses on the horrific aspects of Arkham Asylum will inevitably feature this trope as a plot point. As the Trope Codifier for Bedlam House and Cardboard Prison in comic books, Arkham is packed with homicidal maniacs, slavering psychopaths, and terrifying serial killers—and that's just the regular population. The super-criminals who are frequently imprisoned there, from the Laughing Mad Joker to the plant-controlling Poison Ivy to the human-devouring Killer Croc, are also a constant threat. Yet most of the employees are simply nine-to-five Gothamites trying to make an honest living, and the contrast between their everyday lives and those of the insane inmates is quite jarring. To name a few specific examples:
  • In The Killing Joke, Batman goes to personally interrogate the Joker. He's assisted by the receptionist, a kind-looking woman who points him in the right direction and doesn't seem fazed by what's happening around her. She even has a "You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps!" joke sign on her desk.
  • At least three employees of Arkham eventually succumbed to madness themselves and became criminals in their own right. The most famous is probably Harleen Quinzel, a psychiatrist who tried to take on the Joker and ended up being charmed into loving him instead as Harley Quinn. There's also Jonathan Crane, a psychiatrist whose obsession with phobias drove him over the edge and made him into the fear-controlling Scarecrow, and Lyle Bolton, a security guard whose extreme attempts to correct patients' behavior pushed him into taking up the mantle of Lock-Up, a villain specializing in imprisoning techniques.
  • Arkham Asylum: Living Hell is a rather more literal example of this trope. One of the main characters, Aaron Cash, is an Arkham security guard who struggles with day-to-day operations in the asylum, not the least of which is the fact that Killer Croc has bitten his hand off. Things go From Bad to Worse when the legions of Hell invade Arkham, and Cash suddenly has to deal with both human and supernatural threats. There's also Dr. Carver, a psychiatrist who was murdered by the villainous Jane Doe; Doe's been impersonating her as part of an escape plan.
  • The biggest example of this trope might be Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth. Arkham's inmates take over the asylum on April Fools' Day, and several regular staff members, including psychiatrists, orderlies, and kitchen workers, end up trapped by their insane schemes and forced to participate in the Criminal Mind Games the villains are playing on Batman. The story ends with the implication that Arkham itself is a Genius Loci possessed by a "spirit of madness" that compels insanity in its population.

Film — Live-Action

• The Belko Experiment: The employees at an office for a non-profit organization are forced into lockdown and told that they must begin killing each other until only one person is left alive. The whole ordeal is revealed to only be round one of a twisted social experiment from a MegaCorp.
• Cemetery Man: Francesco Dellamorte is a cemetery caretaker tasked with not only burying the dead, but it's just as much a public service to shoot the zombies that keep coming back to life every night.
• Forklift Driver Klaus: New forklift driver Klaus is the cause of and ultimately a victim of workplace horror in a German warehouse that is very lax when it comes to workplace safety, and is an absolute death trap.
• In Mayhem, a virus spreads through an office complex causing white-collar workers to act out their worst impulses.
• Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead: The fictional fast food restaurant American Chicken Bunker was built on top of an ancient Indian Burial Ground. The protagonist Arbie, who was working there, and his girlfriend Wendy have to fend off the customers who got turned into zombie chickens.
• Sorry to Bother You is about protagonist Cassius Green getting a telemarketer job at RegalView, where he puts on a borderline supernaturally compelling "White Voice" to bring in customers. As he moves upwards in the company, he learns about its connections to MegaCorp WorryFree, a company that makes criminal dealings and houses its workers in factories not unlike prison or slave labor, and uncovers their plans to genetically modify employees into literal workhorses.
• Willy's Wonderland: When the Drifter is offered a job to do for the night while his car is being fixed, he's given the assignment of spending the night cleaning up Willy's Wonderland, a local Suck E. Cheese's restaurant that's been closed for some time, which the Drifter accepts. What the guy giving him the job doesn't mention is that the restaurant is populated by Hostile Animatronics who are haunted by the ghosts of a bunch of serial killers who will kill anyone that they catch inside of their stomping grounds, with the Drifter being the next intended victim. What NOBODY expected, though, was that the Drifter is able to fight back against, and KILL said killer animatronics, which he does... before going right back to doing the job to which he was assigned.

Literature

• And Then There Were None: Rogers continues to perform his duties as a butler after the murders start, even though his own wife was one of the victims until he is murdered himself.
• Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix is about a haunted furniture store clearly based on Ikea, and the terrible, terrible things that happen to its staff.
• Robert A. Heinlein's The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag: The titular character hires a pair of private investigators to find out what he himself does for a living. Despite encountering several terrifying events and a literally monstrous cult called the Order of the Bird, the pair continue the investigation to its conclusion.

Live-Action TV

• Ash vs. Evil Dead: A possessed doll attacks Ash while he's pulling a shift at his workplace, Value Stop.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The episode "Doublemeat Palace" is about Buffy getting a job at a fast food burger joint, where she suspects something is wrong with the meat being served. It turns out the meat itself is fine, but there is a demon in the restaurant that she defeats.
• Severance (2022) is more along the lines of a Psychological Thriller but is about a MegaCorp that has its employees separate their work memories from those of their personal lives outside of work, essentially creating Split Personalities known as "innies" (the half with the work memories) and "outies" (the half outside of work). Naturally this procedure works to prevent both counterparts from finding out the true reality that the other is living in.
• Supernatural: The season 4 episode "It's a Terrible Life" is an Alternate Reality Episode where Sam and Dean are somehow unrelated co-workers at a large software company. When a ghost at the building starts killing people, they are forced to work together to stop the threat. At the end they learn that the angels of Heaven had altered their memories as a Secret Test of Character to prepare them for their fight with the demon Lilith.

Podcasts

• The Magnus Archives: The Magnus Institute's archival staff deals with a lot of this. Special mention goes to Jane Prentiss, who traps Martin in his apartment and impersonates him over the phone to his coworkers, resulting in him having to live in the Archives for his own safety, and later attacks the Institute, resulting in the death of Sasha and the near-deaths of Jon and Tim; Michael/the Distortion, who lures a statement-giver into its doors, stabs Jon, and traps Tim and Martin in its hallways for two weeks; and Not-Sasha, who murders Sasha, erases almost everybody's memories of her, and pretends to be her for a whole season. However, as the series progresses and the characters gain more information about the setting their job descriptions gradually shift more towards hunters of monsters. Also, it turns out that employment in the Archives is automatically this, as signing an employment contract binds the employee to the Eye, and archival assistants cannot leave their positions unless either the Archivist they work under dies or they take a different way out.

Radio

• The Attendent: This The BBC Radio 4 dramedy series is about an all-night garage attendant who finds himself inexplicably living in a different movie genre every episode. These have included dealing with Frankenstein's Monster, a Zombie Apocalypse, and evil clones.

Video Games

• The Closing Shift: You play as a barista at a coffee shop during the night shift, but soon discover unsettling clues that a stalker is out to get you.
• Control: The setting is a massive, Brutalist skyscraper called the Oldest House. It was discovered by the FBC by complete accident (having a Perception Filter over it that makes it invisible to the rest of New York City) and they had repurposed it into their headquarters ever since. Befitting its place as a New Weird game, a lot of the game's horror comes from the banality of its workplace environment. This ranges from rooms shifting out of nowhere, rooms spontaneously filled with clocks and killer sharks, Eldritch Abominations invading through portals, a cursed novel killing its readers in a staff book club, and the staff making a Subverted Kids' Show as part of a team building exercise.
• Do You Copy?: The game puts the player in the shoes of a park watchman who is radioed for help by a hiker, who is being chased by something. The watchman must give the hiker instructions to guide him to safety, while also trying to lead whatever's after him in the opposite direction, though you also have to be careful not to lead it to your location either.
• Fallen London: Many of the story lines involve the characters treating the various horrors of the Neath as workplace inconveniences. The Exceptional Story The Bloody Wallpaper is a standout example. In it the player is charged with working a shift at the Royal Bethlehem Hotel and the horror comes equally from the threats and dangers within the hotel itself, and the soul crushing horror of having to keep smiling while dealing with the inconsiderate and disgusting guests. It is equally comparable to a surreal nightmare and a tough shift at a bad service job.
• Fears to Fathom: In a first for the series (unless one counts Noah's housesitting duties in Carson House), Ironbark Lookout heavily revolves around the player carrying out Jack's duties as the new fire lookout in a state park. This includes recording the wind speed, temperature and weather each night before turning in, communicating with other lookouts, investigating problem campers and assisting a lost hiker over the radio. Over the course of about a week, Jack starts to sense there's something sinister going on in the park, but the other staff are either dismissive or give only cryptic warnings.
• Five Nights at Freddy's: The entire premise for most of the games is this. You are a night-shift security guard tasked with watching over animatronics that come to life at night and try to murder you. Usually, you have to survive five nights on the job to complete the main game, not counting extra nights and challenges. Certain games play around with this premise, such as Five Nights at Freddy's 4 (which averts this by having you as a child fending off animatronics in a bedroom) and Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location (where you're a technician responsible for maintaining the animatronics and the place).
• Going Under: Fizzle is a company literally built on the remains of failed startups, with its former employees twisted into monstrous forms. On behalf of her superiors, Jacqueline, an unpaid intern for the company, must adventure into the depths and hunt down the remaining monsters before they can overrun the surface.
• Happy's Humble Burger Farm: You're an Amnesiac Hero who has just been appointed as the night shift manager at the titular burger joint. Better get to work. It's your job to juggle all manner of cooking and cleaning tasks while also serving up the food orders. You'd better do a good job, lest you stir the wrath of Asset Joy, who will literally mash you up into a fine pink paste if she catches you. If you keep at your job well enough, you'll start to unravel the mystery of what is really going on around you.
• Hell Pie: The game's hub world and first level is an office building in Hell — named Sin Inc. — and it's portrayed as a pretty hostile work environment. The halls are littered with pools of lava and mangled piles of meat, your coworkers could literally go insane and set up deathtraps out of office supplies should anything happen to the WiFi, and pissing off the Boss in any way can result in a bloody stump where your head used to be. All of this is Played for Laughs, as the game has a decidedly light-hearted tone despite all the nasty stuff within.
• Killer Frequency: The game's plot involves a radio jockey (Forrest Nash) and his producer (Peggy Weaver) trying to manage a usual call-in radio station routine, but on the night Gallows Creek's mythical serial killer The Whistling Man returns to take revenge on the town. Due to earlier circumstances, you're also tasked by the town's only 911 operator Leslie to serve as a temporary operator team, while she gets help from a neighboring town. In their radio station, Forrest and Peggy have to juggle listening to callers, some of whom will be potential victims, and give them directions on how to survive their plight to avoid The Whistling Man killing them. Failure will result in listening to horrific murders on-air, while the leads and their listeners can only contemplate within the ambiguous safety of the radio station and homes. At the same time, you're tasked with playing music and ads, interviewing people, and dealing with the occasional prank caller. In the game's climax, Forrest's safety inside the radio station is tested when The Whistling Man traps you inside with them.
• The Mortuary Assistant: The game casts you as the newly-hired mortician's assistant at a morgue. The object of the game is to work the night shift while your boss is away, preparing a bunch of bodies for their funerals... and trying to figure out which one contains a demon that must be exorcised.
• Night Delivery: You're doing your job of delivering packages at night to a Japanese apartment complex, but soon start to uncover a twisted conspiracy involving all of the tenants that verges into the supernatural.
• Night of the Consumers: You are a retail worker trying to keep the store clean while attempting to help rude, unpleasable customers under the threat of summoning the store's manager — an Ambiguously Human, perpetually grinning man who will kill you if he thinks you're not doing your job well.
• Night Shift: A survival-horror game about a gas station attendant named Debra attempting to do her job while a customer behaves rather strangely...
• No Delivery: The employees of a haunted pizza parlor are just trying to make it through their workday while dealing with supernatural horrors.
• The sequel to No Delivery, Sorry, We're Open, ramps up the horror, with your character being the manager in charge of a struggling store that must visit other stores in the chain, as well as corporate headquarters, in order to understand the monstrosities at the heart of everything.
• Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion alludes to this regarding the encounter with Specimen 11, which takes place in a (heavily distorted) burger joint. The monster was discovered under a large abandoned corporate office once owned by a restaurant franchise, and likely had something to do with the paranormal happenings surrounding its stores — an employee who worked at one noted that customers suddenly became addicted to the beef, the managers became extremely violent towards anyone bringing outside food into the restaurant, and after having one of the burgers themselves, the employee too became addicted and finally quit after becoming plagued with nightmares about being chased by Specimen 11 in the restaurant.
• The Stanley Parable: While the game is largely light-hearted and comedic, the premise is about the sole remaining employee in an office trying to figure out what happened to the rest of his coworkers. Which is but one of the paths he can take: the further he explores, the more gradual his office is shown to be an Eldritch Location, as well as continuously being influenced by a narrator who seems to change things around on a whim. The themes of who's really in control of the situation can affect both of them, from Stanley driven to insanity and suicide after realizing the Narrator's presence in one ending to the Narrator becoming frantic without Stanley or a Player to bounce off of in another, to both panicking over what will happen to them next after Reading Ahead in the Script in yet another.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: Romero is the caretaker of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, where the corpses don't tend to stay dead. Every night, he has to put down any reanimated zombies to prevent them from spilling out into Hollywood Boulevard. One mission has the fledgling take over for a few minutes (and take out a zombie horde) while Romero does some personal business.
• Whack Your...: A series of flash games about a Villain Protagonist tasked with brutally killing various caricatures in various ways. The games started with Whack Your Boss and was popular enough to spawn a few continuations with more ideas.
• Working Stiffs: This flash game deals with a Zombie Apocalypse inside an office building with the employees as survivors.
• Yuppie Psycho focuses on the first day at the office for Brian, who must brave monsters, coworkers, and puzzles to kill the immortal witch lurking in the building.
• Zoochosis has you playing as a night shift zookeeper in a zoo filled with Animalistic Abominations pretending to be normal animals, such as a pouch-mouthed kangaroo and a giraffe that can skitter up a wall.

Web Animation

• Spooky Month: Kevin's subplots revolve around him working at the Candy Club and being forced to deal with dangerous and/or supernatural events that Skid and Pump, either directly or indirectly, bring along with them; such as an Eldritch Abomination that momentarily breaks Kevin's mind, a bag of sugar that looks like cocaine right as two cops enter the store, and being attacked by both a killer doll and a cannibal on two separate occasions. He also mentions an offscreen Noodle Incident in which he had to clean up fake blood off the floor.

Web Original

• Tales from the Gas Station: The series details the ongoing saga of a "shitty gas station on the edge of town" where all manner of strange happenings go down, to the point that, for example, getting kidnapped by a deranged Satanist or meeting a god of darkness doesn't warrant much more than annoyance.
• The nosleep subreddit and similar online forums are fond of a genre known as 'rules horror', many of which follow the same formula; A (often nameless) protagonist, desperate for work, sign on to a mysterious business with the promise of a paycheck. Upon arriving they find a list of rules that must be followed to keep away the monsters/evil/Cosmic Horror away, which will inevitably be broken.

Web Videos

• James Rolfe's The Deader The Better: Two men are working at a cemetery where zombies keep popping out of their graves. The men kill off the zombies and clean up the blood and gore afterwards.

Western Animation

• Regular Show: The central premise of the show is that Mordecai and Rigby, a pair of slacker groundskeepers working at an urban park, will often find themselves in bizarre or supernatural circumstances in their efforts to do (or avoid) their jobs. For example, the pilot episode involves Mordecai and Rigby unintentionally unleashing an Eldritch Abomination during a game of Rock–Paper–Scissors.

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