6. Thanks A Lot, Mom
This isn’t why I got fired, but it is why I didn’t get hired. I was 16 and trying to get my first job at Dairy Queen. My mom drove me to the interview, and I was incredibly nervous.
She looked me in the eye and said, “Just be honest, be yourself, and you’ll do great.” I took that advice in the worst possible way.
I walked into the interview, and when the manager asked, “How long do you think you’ll work here?” I answered, “Until something better comes along.”
7. It’s Like I Wasn’t Even There
I somehow talked my way into a job at a software company after they posted a hiring ad in the local paper. I had no idea what the software actually did. Honestly, I still don’t. They hired me as a trainer, and no one ever really explained what the product was.
I spent a few weeks being trained on the software, but none of it made any sense to me. It felt like everyone was speaking a completely different language. Then one day I showed up, and a woman I had never seen before handed me a check and walked me out to the parking lot.
No one even said, “You’re fired” or anything like that. It was one of the strangest experiences I’ve ever had.
8. No Compassion At All?
I went to the emergency room instead of going to work. When I came back with an ER note, they said, “We won’t be needing that. Can you come with us?” I was 18, and it was my first full-time job.
9. You Got Me In This Mess
My parole officer wanted to make sure I really had a job, so he went to the employer listed in my file to surprise me at work. I did residential wiring, so I worked at different job sites and was almost never at the office. So of course, I wasn’t there.
He called me and said he was going to charge me for lying about where I was. It could have sent me back to prison to finish the rest of my sentence. The owner of the company had to talk to him and confirm that I really did work there.
My parole officer didn’t charge me, but the owner definitely fired me that same day. Finding a job with my record has never been easy, and before long my PO was threatening to charge me again if I didn’t find another job soon.
10. A Word To The Wise
I was teaching ESL and Italian at a school that I’m not sure was completely legitimate; I was paid in cash by the hour. My pay depended on how many kids showed up that day. If fewer than five came, I got paid less.
One day, only two kids showed up, and I taught the class anyway. The next day, I got a text from my boss at 4 a.m. saying I needed to come in two hours earlier than usual. When I got there, the missing kids were there, and I had to teach them the class they had missed.
At the end of the day, I went to collect my pay. “So, eight hours at $15 an hour, that’s $120.” He said, “No, six hours. I told you that you had to make up those hours.”
“And I did, which is why it’s eight hours.”
“It was your responsibility, so it’s six hours.”
“Sir, I charge by the hour.”
He gave me a hard look, handed me the cash for eight hours, and told me not to come back. The funny part is, I was his only teacher, and he doesn’t know any Italian. He probably thought I was going to beg for the job. Now he has a language school with no teacher.
11. Time Isn’t Your Money
I refused to come in 15–20 minutes early, unpaid, before my shift. I was always 5–10 minutes early, but they decided they wanted me there even earlier.
So I kept doing what I’d always done, because I wasn’t going to show up unpaid. One day I arrived for a noon shift at 11:49, and nobody would even look at me when I walked in.
Then they pulled me into a meeting and fired me for being “late.” I was out the door before noon even arrived. It’s the only job I’ve ever been fired from.
12. They Didn’t Understand His Art
Okay, I’ll admit it: I was young and not thinking things through. On a particularly awful day at a ski resort, I built a snow scorpion sculpture—I even used ketchup for the glowing red eyes. The guests loved it. Management definitely did not.
13. My Lips Are Sealed
My boss’s wife thought he was having an affair with the office manager. He asked me if I thought it was possible that he was having an affair with the office manager.
I said, “It’s possible, but I don’t think you are. I can also understand why your wife might think that.”
I was 21 and incredibly naïve. I never should have said anything.
14. A Silver Lining
This was the last job I ever got fired from, a little over 12 years ago. One of our biggest clients, K-Mart, had filed for bankruptcy and was shutting down a lot of stores. The corporate office at the company I worked for—a supplier for K-Mart and other chain stores—sent word to all warehouses and offices that all part-time employees were being laid off.
My supervisor told me, and I said I’d figured it was coming. But there was a small upside.
She told me there were some DVDs and CDs in the back and said I could take whatever I wanted. I grabbed a couple of CDs, a *Planet of the Apes* remake on DVD, and a *Simpsons* VHS tape.
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15. Going Above And Beyond To Be A Jerk
The only time I’ve ever been fired was from a trade company, during my first week. I was one of the supervisors on site, and there was another supervisor there too. Then I got a call saying my wife had been rushed to the hospital, which was less than a mile away.
I asked the other supervisor if I could leave to go see her, and he said, “Sure, no problem. I’ve got things covered. Go.”
I came back to the job site later and found out something infuriating.
My boss was there, and he fired me on the spot for leaving the crew “without a supervisor.”
He knew exactly what had happened and fired me anyway. I won’t pretend otherwise — that one made me furious.
16. Putting My Foot Down
After 3 years on the job, I decided I wanted 2 days off, and the owner approved it. This was just a couple of weeks after both my grandmother and great-grandmother had passed away within about a week of each other, so I wanted to take a short trip with my immediate family.
The day before my time off, the manager, not the owner, told me I couldn’t take those 2 days, and that if I didn’t show up, I’d definitely be fired. I gave her a quick “forget that,” finished my shift, and never went back. No regrets.
17. Punctuality Isn’t Everything
I got fired for turning in my timesheets on Monday at 8 a.m. when I arrived at work. Technically, company policy said they had to be submitted by noon on Saturday, but my Fridays usually ended out in the field, so I always took care of them on Monday mornings.
My bosses didn’t even look at them until noon on Tuesday, so it made absolutely no difference to them. I drove home after getting fired actually feeling relieved because I was so unhappy in that job.
Vitalii Vodolazskyi, Shutterstock
18. You Are What You Don’t Eat
I got fired for giving my employee meal to my mother. That’s literally all I did. I didn’t like eating the food there, so my mom would bring me lunch, and I’d give her my employee meal instead. Apparently, that counted as theft, so I was fired.
ANTONI SHKRABA production ,Pexels
19. Not Taking One For The Team
I worked at a DIY store. About 10 minutes before my shift ended, I slowly moved a pallet cage full of paint cans to the warehouse. Once I got there, one of the sides gave way and about half the paint cans fell out. Paint spilled everywhere.
This is where I made my biggest mistake. Since I only had about 2 minutes left in my shift, I pushed the pallet over the paint to hide some of it and went home.
Unfortunately for me, the whole thing was caught on CCTV.
20. What An Animal
I was in my late 20s, had recently left the Army, and wanted to finish school. I worked part-time as a groomer at a pet store while wrapping up the semester.
I had requested time off for finals week about 3 months earlier, and it was approved by both my direct supervisor and the assistant manager.
Everyone in the store knew I’d be focused on school that week. But my awful boss called me in the middle of one of my finals and left a voicemail saying I needed to come in because they were short one person.
I didn’t see any of it until about 45 minutes later when I came out of class. He had called me 4 times, and in the fourth voicemail he left a threatening message.
I called him back, and we argued about my “professionalism.” I went into the store to talk with him in person, and that turned into him threatening to fight me.
I told him that if he really wanted to fight, he could take off his name tag and meet me in the parking lot off company property. He suddenly got much calmer and simply told me I was fired.
I sent the voicemails to corporate, and a few weeks later I found out he had been “transferred” to another store.
21. Bad Timing
I got fired for going to get lunch. I was 18 and working at a mall kiosk with a “manager” title, even though I wasn’t really managing anything, for around $8 an hour. The hours were posted on the door, and I had no backup or anyone to cover me for a break.
The owner showed up while I had locked up to grab something to eat and fired me on the spot.
22. Lesson Learned
This one is rough. I was fired for taking medication for personal use. I was a nurse. I’m 6 years clean now, but I lost my nursing license. It was a hard lesson, but it may have saved my life.
23. Short-Cutters Never Prosper
I was fired because my position was “eliminated.” That was really just code for, “We’re getting rid of you so we can hire someone else for half the pay.” Karma caught up with them.
Their plan was far from successful because the person they hired was completely incapable of doing the job.
Customers were extremely upset, and the company ended up giving me a $15,000 severance package if I agreed not to sue. I took the money and sued them anyway for age discrimination. I won.
24. No Wiggle Room
I had bronchitis on a Sunday and let them know that same day. I called again on Monday with a doctor’s note saying I shouldn’t return until the following Monday. My manager told me, “OK, feel better.”
Then Friday came, and I got an email saying I was terminated immediately because of absences. It was my first absence. I asked if I could resign instead, because I really loved the work and the people I worked with, but they said no.
25. Things Aren’t As They Seem
I’m an electrician, and I got my final warning for having a messy van. It wasn’t in great shape, but I was told to clean it up over the weekend, which I did. Then I still got my final warning and was dismissed the following week.
What bothered me most was that my boss was the worst one for having a messy van, and I’d probably picked up that habit from him when I was his apprentice.
Honestly, looking back, I was probably fired for other reasons. Since then, I’ve realized that people usually aren’t fired for the exact reason they’re told.
When they want you gone, they’ll find something. It’s better to reflect on your own shortcomings than stay angry about being fired over something minor.
26. Under New Management
I was a brand-new engineer right out of college. Really green. I got a job offer at an aircraft factory as a Quality Engineer. I had already interned there for three years, and they had helped me get through school.
I worked with a team that designed new floor layouts and planned how these business jets moved through production.
I had always gotten strong performance reviews, which is why my internship turned into a scholarship and eventually a full-time offer. But when I started full-time, I was assigned to a facility across town that handled sheet metal work.
I still remember walking into the office on my first day and introducing myself to my new manager.
She turned away immediately, refused to shake my hand, and ignored me. And for the next six months, it stayed that way. She simply would not speak to me, would not give me projects, would not schedule one-on-ones or provide any direction, and if I was included on an email chain and she was copied, she would remove me.
Whenever I walked over to her, she would hunch over and try to hide whatever she was working on so I couldn’t see it, like it was some huge secret. Eventually, I got involved in a few continuous improvement projects, and I started, in my opinion, to find my footing.
Then one day, she pulled me into a conference room and yelled at me for two hours—yes, two full hours—about how I wasn’t doing the things she wanted me to do. But that wasn’t the end of it.
She handed me a self-help book and told me I needed to read it and explain to her what was wrong with me. Then she fired me without HR or anyone else even knowing.
To this day, I have no idea what her problem was or why she seemed to hate me from the moment I introduced myself. Since then, I’ve built a great, successful career and now manage quality for four factories in a Swedish conglomerate.
If I ever see her again, I’ll tell her that I shaped my management style around one promise: I would never treat people the way she treated me.
My employees always know what’s expected of them, how to tell whether they’re succeeding, and where to go for help if they’re struggling.
27. High Maintenance
I was in a really bad place when I accepted a job I knew I was barely qualified for. It was as a maintenance repair worker at an apartment complex.
The truth is, I had no idea how to fix much of anything. It lasted a few months before they figured that out. I did try hard to learn and watched YouTube videos to help, but I was taking way too long to get things done.
28. Runaway Employee
I have a friend who used to work at a large retail store. Every day, her manager would tell her when it was time to take her 15-minute breaks and lunch break.
The problem was that the same manager—or co-workers sent by that manager—kept interrupting her during those breaks. Because of that, she started taking her breaks in her car.
The manager got upset about it and pushed things so far that my friend was fired for supposedly leaving the property during her 15-minute breaks. Apparently, that wasn’t allowed.
But she hadn’t actually left at all. She was just sitting in her car reading for a little while so she could get away from work.
She didn’t have money for a lawyer, but I’ve always thought that would have been a pretty easy wrongful termination case to prove if she had.
29. An Underlying Issue
I was fired from Panera the moment I walked in for my first day of work. I showed up 10 minutes early and went inside five minutes before my shift started.
The manager met me at the door, said I was being “unprofessional,” and even threatened to call the authorities when I asked for an explanation.
It turned out the employees were using a lot of substances while working and were probably not thinking clearly.
30. Not Worth The Time
I was working at a start-up and wearing myself out trying to meet all my performance goals—which I did. At one point, I told my boss I wasn’t willing to give up my work-life balance forever. His response told me everything I needed to know.
He said I wasn’t dedicated enough and fired me on the spot.
His exact words were: “We need people who are 200% dedicated, not just 100%.”
31. A Take-Home Blunder
This happened 30 years ago. I was really angry at my boss for making me work a private event for a bunch of his friends. Because of the theme, most people were drinking Corona. I worked a six-hour shift at the open bar, and at the end of the night he tipped me just $20.
Before I left, I slipped 4 Coronas into my backpack. The assistant manager heard the bottles clinking and asked me about it. When I told him I was taking a few Coronas home for myself, he fired me.
Honestly, it was justified. The only grudge I still have is against the boss who gave me such a terrible tip.
32. Wrongfully Accused
This was 22 years ago. Technically, I got fired for harassment, but the real story was very different. The big boss liked me and wanted to train and promote me.
The manager under him didn’t like me. While he was away for a couple of weeks, I was called into the office and told I was being fired for harassing another staff member—a man much older than me, while I was a 16-year-old girl.
My direct boss was shocked, and so was I. This person worked in our department, but I had only spent a couple of hours around him on my first day while he showed me the computer system. After that, we barely spoke other than the occasional hello.
After the meeting, my direct boss apologized and said she had no idea it was coming or what they were even talking about. It was just me and her in one office. The other two staff members, including that guy, had a separate office.
There was no real reason for us to be in each other’s space. Eventually, it came out that he had been pressured into going along with it. When the big boss came back, he was furious, but by then it had already happened. The person behind it never moved up any further in the company.
Again, I was a 16-year-old girl, and the man they pushed into this was around 28. It was uncomfortable on so many levels. Still, it wasn’t a huge loss for me. The person who set it up ended up looking much worse.
33. Office Space
I work full-time as a web designer now, and my first full-time job was creating social media content for a start-up in my hometown. One Friday, about 8 months into the job, my boss emailed everyone saying we’d be starting at “the new office” on Monday.
No one had told me we were moving, though it seemed like everyone else already knew. I also didn’t have a full driver’s license yet, and the new office was in a town an hour away, so I would have had to rely on public transit every day.
Thankfully, my parents gave me some good advice, and I told my boss I couldn’t realistically make that commute, but I still wanted to stay with the company. So my boss ended my position, and I was able to go on unemployment—which wouldn’t have happened if I had quit.
34. Nickle And Diming
I worked at a car dealership during college between semesters. I sold a Ford Raptor for about 80k, and my commission was around $200. After that, I mostly just sat at my desk and studied for school. I didn’t make much effort to sell anything else—there just wasn’t any incentive.
I knew I’d probably get fired, but it still took them 2 months to notice I had basically done nothing since selling that Raptor. $200 for selling an 80k truck? No thanks.
35. Out Of The Frying Pan And Into The Firewall
I was working in Tech Support for a software company. We had just made a big sale to a major university, and I had been assigned as their main contact. The first thing they asked was, “How do we enable the firewall on your product?”
That was a problem. Our product didn’t have a firewall.
I tried to explain things for a while, but eventually they asked directly where the firewall was. I told them, “There isn’t one.” Within an hour, I was in a conference room with the sales rep, the head of sales, and my boss, who was the head of Tech Support.
There was a lot of yelling from the sales side, followed by a lot of meetings with management for the rest of the day.
Through all of it, no one could deny the basic fact that I was telling the truth: our product didn’t have a firewall, and there were no plans to add one in future versions. The next morning, I came in, and my boss met me at the door, walked me to a conference room, and told me I was being let go for “performance reasons.”
Later that day, the sales rep messaged me on LinkedIn and told me to enjoy waking up unemployed the next morning.
36. I Don’t Believe In You
I was hired by someone who knew I had no previous experience, but believed I was a fast learner and liked my attitude.
He and another senior manager really took the time to teach me the job, answer my questions, and remind me that I should always come to them if I was unsure about anything.
Then they both left the company pretty suddenly, and my new boss was the complete opposite. He made it clear right away that if it had been his decision, he would have hired someone with more experience. Even so, he doubled my workload.
When I went to him with problems, he told me it wasn’t his job to answer questions and said I should ask my co-worker instead.
My co-worker did his best to help, but he was already overwhelmed with his own workload. I ended up feeling completely lost, and my work suffered because of it. About a month after taking over, my new boss fired me.
37. No Regrets
At 7:30 the night before I was supposed to leave for vacation, my boss texted me saying I had to come in the next day no matter what. Keep in mind, I had requested that time off 4 weeks earlier.
I told him he was out of line. I didn’t go in the next day, and I was fired for insubordination. Still worth it. I’d do it again.
mikoto.raw Photographer , Pexels
38. A Little Too Efficient
The only time I ever got fired, I was 13 or 14 and working at a go-kart track. I’d been there about a month when I was left alone for an entire week to manage the track, while the other two attendants sat around drinking and talking with the boss.
I handled everything without any problems. Then on my first day off after working around 12 days in a row, I got called in. I showed up within 5 minutes, and they fired me, saying all I did was sit around and make the other guys do the work.
They basically accused me of doing exactly what those other guys had been doing. I told everyone I knew how badly that place was run, and they went out of business within the next 2 years.
39. Stand By Me
My co-worker had been denied promotions, title changes, and pay raises for years, even though he practically ran our 3-person department. He had been struggling with serious depression for a long time, and sadly, he didn’t make it through.
A week after he passed away, I had a meeting with my manager, department director, and someone from the executive team. What I found out made me furious. They were hiring two people to replace him, and the job titles were the exact same ones he had been asking for over the years.
I was furious and spent about 20 minutes tearing into them over how they had always told him it wasn’t possible, but now that he was gone, it suddenly was. I was fired 2 days later, and I don’t regret it at all. Those people were awful.
40. Hackers Gonna Hack
In college, I had a temp job doing quality assurance. I discovered that their internal site had profile pages where JavaScript could run freely through the form fields. I thought it would be funny to make my profile look ridiculous, so I changed the colors and added some animation.
That way, if someone looked through the employee profiles, it might get a laugh while also drawing attention to the fact that the site allowed code execution. I had already pointed this out to them before. Anyway, I got fired for a “security breach.”
41. Timing Is Everything
I was fired on day 89 of a 90-day temp contract. The agreement said that if you were still employed as a temp on day 90, they had to bring you on full time. They also had a point system for discipline: being late was half a point, and reaching 3 points meant automatic termination.
At the meeting where they fired me, they said I had somehow racked up 30 points. I explained, for what felt like the hundredth time, that the punch clock for temps was set 15 minutes ahead of the clock used by permanent employees. Because of that, all the temps were getting paid an extra 15 minutes every day since they would clock in and then sit in the cafeteria.
I came in at the same time as my boss every single day... and he was the one firing me for building up what amounted to 60 workdays of tardy points.
But I had one last question. I asked why they hadn’t fired me when I reached 3 points. Why let me get all the way to 30? They said it was because they liked my production numbers.
They even suggested I reapply as a temp and said they could have me back on the floor as soon as the next day.
42. You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone
I got fired because I stepped in and calmed down a manager who was yelling at a 16-year-old girl in front of customers. The manager didn’t appreciate me stopping her from acting terribly, so she fired me. This happened years ago.
The wild part is that she had apparently convinced a few staff members to support her by pretending I was bad at my job. She may have even made up fake write-ups. Either way, she refused to show them to me when I asked, and I definitely never signed anything that looked like a formal warning.
Two days after I was fired, several employees — including some who had sided with the manager — came to my house asking for help. Once I was gone, no one was left to push back on the manager, and she started turning on everyone else.
She was screaming at people and writing them up for not being in two parts of the store at once, refusing unsafe tasks, and more. I told them they had helped her get rid of me, so now they could deal with her themselves.
43. A Scheduling Nightmare
I got fired for taking the vacation my manager had approved.
I was working part-time and wanted to go to an event with some friends, some of whom also worked for the same company — one at my location and one at another store across town.
Knowing it might be difficult to get the time off if others had already asked for it, I checked before booking or paying for anything. My manager said they would look into it and let me know.
I followed up a few times and kept getting brushed off until I finally said I needed an answer.
If it couldn’t be approved, that would be disappointing but fine. But tickets were about to sell out, so if I waited much longer, it wouldn’t matter whether the time off was approved or not.
So my manager and I stood at the computer together and went over the schedule for that week. They confirmed they could make it work if I took the week off.
I paid for my tickets, accommodations, and everything else. Then, the week before I was supposed to leave, the new schedule came out — and I was on it. I reminded my manager that we had agreed I could have the week off, and they told me it no longer worked and that I needed to come in.
I said I had already spent more than I would earn that week on my trip, and I was going. My manager called shortly after the start of my first scheduled shift and asked if I was coming in.
I told them I was 16 hours away, on my way to the event I had planned for. I was fired on the spot. It was a little satisfying to hear later that he got demoted.
44. Got Ya There
I got fired for finishing my work too quickly and sitting down the rest of the time. I was working as a gas station cashier.
Me: “Why should I stand when I’m the only person in the store?”
Manager: “It looks more professional to stand than sit.”
Me: “Then why do you sit in your office?”
45. You’re Outta Here
My older manager kept insulting me, blaming me for things my co-worker did, and giving me attitude anytime I didn’t go out of my way to cater to her ego. Then one day, she asked me why my co-worker had done something. I told her I had no idea.
She kept pushing, so I said, “How am I supposed to know? Explain that to me. Tell me how I’m supposed to know what he did.” She said, “I don’t know.” So I walked away and went back to work. The next thing I heard was, “You know what? Just go. Get out.”
A few hours later, her boss reversed the decision and transferred me to a better location. But after months of politely asking her not to talk down to me, it was still pretty satisfying to completely shut her out.
46. Down And Out
It was my first real job after college. I got the $52,000-a-year position about four months after graduating. It was an office job in the energy industry. I was really excited. My friends were impressed. I had no idea what I was walking into. I ended up hating the job pretty quickly.
Most of it was unsupervised project management paperwork. After a few months, I basically stopped doing it. Another coworker had started around the same time I did, and I just let him handle all the work.
What really bothers me is that I knew I was heading toward getting fired, but I didn’t try to fix it. I spent most of my days watching StarCraft 2 matches on YouTube.
When my boss — a guy I respected and liked — sat me down with my manager to let me go, he said something like, “This just isn’t working out.” I said, “I know. I’m sorry I didn’t do the work you asked me to do. I think this is the right decision.”
I was really disappointed in myself. It felt serious and deserved. I had worked there for about a year and a half. Then I was unemployed for around four months.
When I got fired, I had about $5,000 in the bank. I put my student loans into forbearance, cut my spending as much as I could, and applied for unemployment benefits.
By the time I started my next job, I still had about $4,500 left. I still don’t know how it happened, especially since I had been fired, but I got another job in the energy field that paid $65,000 a year. The work was a lot more interesting.
I was much stricter with myself in that job. I didn’t waste time browsing the internet at work. I worked hard, and my manager noticed. I liked the job, but I still knew it wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
After almost two years, I left to go back to school and become a physician assistant.
When I gave notice, my manager even offered me a raise to stay. If it weren’t for my girlfriend — now my wife — I’d probably still be a lazy employee. Now I look at my college friends who took lower-paying jobs, around $35,000 a year, and they’re doing really well.
They worked harder than I did and built better connections. I wish I’d had their work ethic when I started my first job. I’d say I bounced back pretty well, and I’m excited about my new career. Still, I’m ashamed of how I acted at that first job. It’s a story I’ll tell my children.
47. The Truth Always Comes Out
I asked the nursing assistant I was working with to stay with a confused patient while I went to start a new IV for someone else. The assistant left the patient alone.
The patient fell out of bed and got a large, bloody skin tear on her arm. After I took care of the injury, I found the assistant and told her the patient had gotten hurt because she ignored my instructions.
She swore at me and walked off the unit. I didn’t see her again for the rest of the shift. She and another assistant had decided on their own to switch assignments. I wrote her up. Then she got back at me.
She went to management and lied about what happened.
She claimed I had called her names and yelled at her. I did neither. Management fired me instead of dealing with the false accusation. I collected unemployment, but in the end, things caught up with her. A couple of weeks later, she pulled something similar with another nurse and was fired.
My manager asked if I could be rehired. HR said no. But when my manager left a year later to start her own nursing agency, she hired me.
48. Outfoxed By A Foxy Lady
I was young and had just started working at a local pizza place. A couple of weeks later, I was let go because a pizza chef from Chicago had moved to town and needed a job. It was a business decision, and I honestly understood it.
Then I found out what had really happened.
A week later, I went in to pick up my final paycheck and asked how the new guy was doing.
The girl at the counter said, “Pizza chef from Chicago? The only new hire was the manager’s new girlfriend.”
49. Fight Cancer, Not Me
I missed a lot of work because my wife had brain cancer. They called me in for a meeting and said, “Sorry, we’re downsizing and letting a lot of people go.” But I knew the truth.
They didn’t fire anyone else, including one coworker who had been caught making up reports.
