The owner of the company - where I got my first office job - would come up behind us girls when we were filing & push his whole body into us.....it was so creepy we'd let the stacks of papers to be filed get a foot high before we'd do the filing because we knew he'd be there in minutes to start rubbing on us...his wife worked there too but since she was in another room, it didn't bother him to do this with her 20 ft away....this was 'back in the day' before women could really speak up for themselves, especially in a small town, where everybody knew everybody, and the good ol' boys watched out for each other....needless to say, there was a frequent turnover.
My next job was doing collections for patient billing & one of the patients, a 75 y/o woman, threatened me on the phone & said she was coming to the office to 'take care of' me - and indeed within 10 minutes, she'd stormed into the room & immediately came behind my desk & was shaking her finger in my face while yelling & cursing...I stood up, she backed away, then I left the room to go get the business offiice manager.
Next job-- the owner was hot-tempered, and when he'd get mad we could all hear him huffing & stomping down the hall on his way to whoever was on his radar at the time....his face would get really red, beads of sweat would pop out on his forehead, and the buttons on his shirt looked as those they were about to pop....I once heard him tell the top salesperson (female) "it just burns my azz to write you this commission check"...I never heard him tell one of the male salesreps *any* thing like this....he always yuk'd it up with them, buddy-buddy style.
Two incidences of customers, while I was onsite: 1) customer wanted me to work on his LAN altho I was there to work on the call accounting software for the phone system...he asked me to go into the office with him, then he started yelling at me to 'sit down right there' while shaking his arm pointing to a chair....I told him I wasn't going to sit down, and in fact, was going to leave...he could take it up with the owner.
2) customer asked a question that I didn't know the answer to (regarding the sale & contract,etc) and I was onsite for technical reasons....I told him I could get the answer for him or he could contact the sales rep who would have it....he rushes to the desk (with a blue-red face from his rage, spit flying out of his mouth) where I was sitting with one of his employees, hits the $1500 telephone & attendant console we'd just installed, and sent it flying several feet onto the floor....I stood up, made it a point to get in his personal space (actually hoping he'd hit me in front of the 20+ people who were all watching this go down so that I could file charges on him AND sue him), and he was no longer so brave...I told him I was leaving which I did...went back to the office (almost puking driving back because I was so freaked out!!) & reported the incident to The Incredible Hulk owner, and he told me I had to go back!! I refused but days later did go back on the condition that the violent customer was not on the premises....the techs had already told me that they thought this customer was a wife beater, because they'd already seen & heard him yelling @ his wife, and she just quivered.
At my next job had a co-worker that all of us pegged as a psycho jerk...he also yelled at me in meetings (altho he was a jerk to everyone, we all recognized he had a problem with women in authority) & also yelled at me to sit down.....this same co-worker talked about how great his chili was, and then he cooked a big pot for our team...for obvious reasons, no one wanted to eat his chilli, which reeeeally pizzed him off....he got his pot of chili, went & the door & emptied the chili in the parking lot, while cursing & yelling about how ungrateful we were....we were all relieved when he was terminated due to his attendance & performance issues....we were truly concerned that he would 'go postal' on us one day.
Another of my co-workers had a customer in San Antonio threaten to drive to Austin to kill him....that incident was referred to security.
Thank goodness at my current job there's only been the one incident (I posted about it on another thread) with the co-worker raging- seemingly losing touch with reality....that was years ago & I'm glad there's been nothing else as unnerving (in terms of having the 'fight or flight' instinct kick in) since.
Sorry post is so long, but it's just my experience that people who want to control others - who refuse to be controlled by rage -can find themselves in scary situations, and even tho there is an office full of other people watching it happen, no one does anything -- not even men!!...guess they were scared, too.
