It’s difficult to picture the precise moment when interpersonal office drama crosses the boundary from Water Cooler Whispers into, well, a felony. But as The Smoking Gun reports, one case out of Wisconsin demonstrates that sometimes, the glue that binds colleagues together can just as easily become evidence in a criminal investigation.
Gorilla Glue and the Art of (Not So) Subtle Sabotage
Court records cited by The Smoking Gun reveal that Joseph Ralph Ross, a 35-year-old employee at the Wisconsin Exposition Center, pleaded guilty to a felony after squeezing Gorilla Super Glue into his co-worker’s Coca-Cola. This was no open-and-shut case of he-said-she-said: the 36-year-old victim, suspicious after past events in the office, reported to police that she noticed her beverages had a “strong chemical smell and taste.” According to the criminal complaint, she became ill after consuming the contaminated soda, which raised her suspicions enough that she hid a surveillance camera beneath her monitor to catch a potential culprit in the act.
Investigators noted that her precaution paid off almost immediately. Within just 30 minutes of setup, video footage reviewed by authorities showed Ross, outfitted in latex gloves, dispensing glue straight into her can of Coke. When law enforcement confronted Ross with the footage, The Smoking Gun notes he attempted to claim he had merely put “a supplement” in the drink. However, any plausible deniability was quickly dissolved; police searching a nearby trash bin discovered the latex gloves stuffed into a ball along with the glue bottle and its cap—a find that further cemented Ross’s involvement.
The Peculiarities of Poisons and Penalties
It’s a strange leap from mild workplace friction to felony tampering, and as described in the criminal complaint highlighted by The Smoking Gun, few cases take such a surreal turn. Was this an improvised attempt at retribution, or simply an ill-conceived prank gone seriously awry? Whatever the motivation, the potential consequences were far from trivial—inadvertently forcing a co-worker to ingest a potent adhesive can hardly be shrugged off as an office joke.
The fallout for Ross was immediate and long-lasting. As part of his guilty plea to the felony charge of placing foreign objects in edibles, the court ordered that he can never own or possess a firearm and loses his right to vote until his civil rights are restored, according to the sentencing details outlined by the outlet. What began as suspicion over an odd-tasting Coke has ended up reshaping the legal and personal life of one office worker.
Office Friction: A New High (or Low)?
Reflecting on the incident, it’s hard not to marvel at the everyday oddities lurking beneath what seem like mundane office interactions. When caution compels someone to go so far as installing a surveillance camera just to keep tabs on their soda, it raises questions about the underlying culture—and when glue enters the equation, it veers headlong into the truly bizarre. How many other petty grievances are bubbling, just waiting for their own moment of offbeat escalation?
You have to wonder: at what point in Ross’s mind did “constructive feedback” morph into “constructive adhesive”? Are there spreadsheets detailing his scheme? A PowerPoint somewhere titled “Operation Stick-It-To-’Em”? We may never know, but the next time a colleague’s lunch looks suspiciously tampered with, perhaps a small dose of caution is in order. Even in the ordinary, there’s always the potential for the surreal—sometimes courtesy of an open bottle of glue.
