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Another year of work has come and gone, and all we have to show for it are these amusing and often shameful stories from cubicle farms the world over. Welcome to the Office Awards, 2008 edition.

Strangest Workplace Trend: Office Bathing

Four workers lost their jobs this year because they took a bath in the workplace. An Ohio Burger King employee celebrated his birthday with a bubble bath in the kitchen sink. He even posted a video of it on MySpace. Then three female employees of a California Kentucky Fried Chicken stripped down to their skivvies and turned the kitchen sink into a hot tub. They also posted the evidence to MySpace. Memo to future office bathers: Stay off MySpace!

Worst Team-Building Exercise: Waterboarding

Chad Hudgens sued his employer after being waterboarded during a sales meeting. "Toward the end, I'm starting to black out," he recalled. "The sensation that's going through my head is, 'I'm going to drown.' " After letting Mr. Hudgens up for air, Joshua Christopherson, a supervisor, told the employees, "You saw how hard Chad fought for air right there. I want you to go back inside and fight that hard to make sales." Hopefully Mr. Christopherson fights that hard to avoid going to jail.

Best Misuse of Company Resources: Office Pornaholic

During an eight-month period, a man who worked in a Japanese city's construction department logged over 780,000 hits to porn sites. According to one calculation, that means "he would have had to access about 542 pornographic webpages every hour of every work day." After being busted, the man was demoted and suspended - meaning he was forced to spend time at home alone. Uh oh.

Award For Excellence in HR: Best Buy

After being fired from his job at Best Buy, Michael Oliveri, a New Jersey man, suspected the company was giving him bad references. So Mr. Oliveri pretended to be a Target employee and e-mailed his old HR department. "I will give you the skinny on him but you can't say you got any info from Best Buy or we can be sued," an HR employee wrote. "He was hired as GM and demoted after 12 months or so because he sucked. He is desperate for a job because supposedly his wife left him because he has no job. I would not touch him." Mr. Oliveri sued. As for the HR worker? She was promoted prior to the suit being filed.

Award For Confirming What We Always Suspected: New Scientist

New Scientist magazine set out to see if the laws of the jungle can be applied to the office. After interviewing behavioural researchers and biologists, it concluded that "the office and the jungle are surprisingly similar," because "both are ruled by stringent hierarchies, they are grounded in the need for co-operation and complicated by the drive to compete." Thankfully, they avoided using the term "monkey business."

Best Time Waster: ReadatWork.com

The New Zealand Book Council launched a site that combines slacking off with classic literature. Readatwork.com opens a window in your browser that looks like a Windows desktop. Instead of work files and folders, it's filled with writing by authors such as Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Click on your favourite and the story or poem appears as a fake PowerPoint presentation. Tolstoy on PowerPoint? Better put in for overtime.

Worst Employee: The Enraged Architect

When Florida architect Marie Cooley believed she was about to be fired, she took pre-emptive revenge by destroying $2.5-million (U.S) worth of the company's computer files. That assured her of getting fired, even though it turned out she wasn't actually on the chopping block. Honourable mentions also go to the Hawaii bus driver who played video games while behind the wheel, and the Texas police lab technician who stole 50 pounds of cocaine from an evidence locker.

Worst Manager: Mr. Hot Mess

Anthony Gutierrez was one of three men sued for sexual harassment by two female staffers in the Ohio attorney-general's office. Included in the complaint was this description of how Mr. Gutierrez, the general services director, showed up one morning after a night of boozing: "The few hairs on his head were standing up, he reeked of booze and vomit, and boogers or vomit were hanging from his nose." The woman said he looked like a "hot mess," and that Mr. Gutierrez also confessed to crashing a state vehicle while drunk. He was fired.

Worst Workplace: Selectabase

An employment tribunal in England awarded a woman over £5,000 ($9,000) for sexual discrimination she suffered at Selectabase, a direct-marketing firm. Her grievances included: getting farted on by a supervisor; having a beach ball thrown at her head; being subjected to sexist comments; and being ordered to wear a badge reading "I'm simple." What, no wedgies?

Prediction for 2009: A Year of Thrift, Grift and Reduced Shifts

These were the top workplace topics at the end of 2008: layoffs and firings; companies cutting expenses by reducing or eliminating perks and benefits; and the cancelling or toning down of office holiday parties. December also saw some firms report an increase in employee theft, be it office supplies, cash or inflated expense reports. Bad news: The coming year will see more of the same. We'll also see companies reducing work hours in lieu of layoffs and workers trying to save money by bringing in bagged lunches, amongst other strategies, and hear about how to find a job in a downturn. Happy new year!

Sources: Associated Press, Careerbuilder.com, Columbus Dispatch, Daily Mail, New York Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post.

Craig Silverman is co-author of Mafiaboy: How I Cracked the I nternet and Why It's Still Broken.