Normally, places will cut you some slack and give you a second chance if you make a mistake—but these screw-ups were way, way beyond what any sane employer could forgive. From clueless coworkers to horrible bosses, these fools went from gainfully employed to out on the street in an instant. If you ever want to get fired, just follow their lead—you’ll be gone in no time.
1. Didn’t Think That One Through
I heard this from a manager I worked with when I worked in fast food. There was this one kid who didn’t show up for work. He ditched work often, so the manager called around, couldn’t get anyone to fill in his shift, and she eventually had to fill it for him. A few hours into his shift, the dude ditching SHOWS UP, with his friends, and orders food from that manager. She fired him on the spot.
2. It All Falls Down
A 19-year-old kid got hired to work the seafood counter at my store. I see him twice and then never again, so I asked a co-worker what happened. They revealed the whole, brilliant story. He had closed seafood one night and was walking out of the store when the five pounds of crab legs he'd stuffed down the back of his pants fell out in front of the closing manager.
3. Out With A Bang
I worked in a bar and a new girl started. At work, she seemed a little rough, but was fine. One day, she finished a shift, sat at the bar, and ordered a cabernet with lemonade and ice in it—not really relevant to the story, it just shows she is clearly insane. What really did her in was this: Her boyfriend came in, they had a huge fight in front of my manager and several customers, and she threw her drink over her boyfriend and dramatically stormed out.
4. Great Party, Gang
He worked at the company for two weeks, came to the Christmas party on Friday, got plastered, told the HR manager that she was an awful person, and would die alone. They had some previous vague romantic history, went on a couple of dates or something. Then he tried to fight two of the customer service managers who asked him to calm down.
While being escorted out, he turned to the CEO and COO and told them to go screw themselves. He showed up to work on the Monday talking about how fun the party was and how he had seen some people who would probably be called into HR that morning. He was the first and only employee to be called and was sacked on the spot.
5. Not A Cat Person
One and a half hours into my shift as an animal care worker, I was showing my trainee how to clean the kitten rooms and started him on the easiest cage. We’re talking neonatal, six-day-old bottle feeder kittens. I explained how to set up the kennel, clean them up, etc. I turned around to grab some towels and a fresh hot water bottle when I heard a thump.
And then another thump. Turned around, and he was tossing the kittens to the other side of the kennel to move them. Like, underhand lobbing a softball, just tossed three kittens out of his way. I freaked out and yanked his butt down to the supervisor’s office. His excuse was the kittens were “attacking” him, and he felt threatened? So he threw them!!
No warnings, fired on the spot. The kittens all were fine and got adopted out a few months later.
6. Mystery Man
This was at a pizza place I worked at in college. The new guy was started there on a Thursday. He seemed like a fine worker, and we showed him the ropes. He was also on subs, which is the easiest job, since the instructions are right in front of your face. Friday, he no call no shows, which is a major problem. It’s Friday, the busiest night of the week.
Besides that, he and I were the only kitchen workers that weren’t also drivers. But then the plot thickened. On Monday, an officer shows up at the restaurant, looking for him. No idea what happened as he wasn’t there. Tuesday, the owner informed me he was let go. What happened?!
7. I Think They Learned Their Lesson
When working as a teacher, I told a classroom full of bratty freshmen to "Shut the @!%$ up." One of them told on me and the administrator came to fire me shortly after. It was worth it.
8. Bon Voyage
My co-worker didn't show up the first day, second day, or third day. This means that I had to work a double shift for three days straight. Not fun, I’ll tell you that much. As it happened, I answered the phone when he finally “called in” on the fourth day of his absence. That’s when I learned his ridiculous reason for ditching.
He said, "I'm going to be honest with you, I've been in Orlando. My parents paid for a small vacation as a reward for me getting the job. Would it be okay to start next week instead of this week?"
9. Honesty is the Best Policy
I worked at a local restaurant as a dishwasher. One of the waitresses told our boss that she was going to “Tie him to a chair and burn down his restaurant with him in it.” She was promptly fired, but apparently was eventually hired back because she came back to tell the tale.
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10. Canceled
I wasn't the boss, but I helped my boss get a co-worker fired. I was working in a record store at the time. Had this slacker kid that was all sorts of cocky for a co-worker. Always bragging about something. But, he did his job, so we dealt with it. Now, before I go further, know this. Record stores have a metric ton of regulars.
More than any other job I've ever had. You get to know your customers. We had a young woman come in all the time that was slightly special. She was good enough to go out on her own on the bus and be on her own for hours. Super sweet. She loved pop music. Each Tuesday, she'd come in and buy whichever new album came out.
We started to put one aside for her each week. Then, we didn't see her for a month or so. I wanna say NSYNC had a new album come out. Or someone like that. I saw her come back in, no smile. No cheeriness. She snuck in and came over to me and asked for the CD. I asked her what's up and where she had been and if she was okay.
She turned red and told me that it was embarrassing. I, not wanting to pry, told her about her stack of pop CDs and told her sorry she's sad. She asked about the slacker, to make sure he wasn't here today. "What did he do?" is the first thing I said. I knew he did something, in that moment. She wrote it down because she didn't want to say it out loud.
He had told her, "Hey, after work, we could meet up and if you give me a suck, I'll return the favor." I asked her to wait there, then I went and got the boss-man. He came out and apologized profusely for what happened and bought her CDs personally. Corporate was called. Not only did they flip out, they actually flew in to deal with it.
The next day when the slacker came in, they took him in the office and flipped out hard on him. He was escorted out and they told us they'd handle things. We never heard any more about it, but our customer was never sad again. I’d call that a job well done.
11. A Hard Lesson in Bad Leadership
My first-grade teacher slapped me across the face for not memorizing hot cross buns. The slap hurt for sure, but having it done in front of a full class hurt more. I told the principal. We had a sub the rest of the year.
12. Slow And Steady Loses The Race
The IT crew at my large government office worked on a ticket system, meaning that the government workers submitted their problem online and one of the IT guys would pick it up on their end. The new guy just started his first day, logged into a computer at an empty office, and submitted a "reinstall entire OS" request so he could spend all day there.
The manager decided to check in on him before lunch to see how he was doing, and he was completely asleep. Fired before they even finished his hiring paperwork.
13. Cheap Cryotherapy
Around 2005 or 2006, I worked in a supermarket. An extremely irate customer returned a five-liter tub of ice cream THAT HAD A FACE IMPRINTED IN IT. Unfortunately, the perpetrator had extremely "unique" features. It looked exactly like our staff member. He had cracked the lid of an ice cream tub, imprinted his face in it, somehow managed to get the lid back on tight enough for no one to notice, and then somebody purchased it.
Not gonna lie, I did giggle at the sheer audacity of it, but still had to fire him. He denied it. "It's literally your face in the ice cream, man." To this day I still think about it and am just a tiny, tiny bit disappointed when I open an ice cream tub and it doesn't have a face imprinted in it. I hope the customer didn't get any mild PTSD and can open ice cream tubs with confidence nowadays.
14. There’s No Secret to Safety
My sketchy boss handed me a complete mess of paperwork that OSHA requires that hadn't been done in years and was told to forge whatever wasn't there. I sent that email to OSHA with a handful of stuff that was missing that they should ask for when they came. He only made it a couple of days after they came in to review the complaint.
15. Looking For Trouble
This happened last week. This new girl is hired, and right off the bat she starts telling me that she regrets taking this job, despite being unemployed for four months, because there are so many new people so it must be a bad job because of the high turnover. For one, this is not really true. A large company just bought us, and they are hiring more people because we have more business.
She then tells us all about how it’s her birthday and she’s going drinking after work. Well, she does a no call no show the next day, which is her third day. We all assume she quit. But the next day, she comes in and starts just trying to work like nothing happened. The supervisor asked what happened, and she said she got in a minor car accident.
He asked why she didn’t call, and she said she doesn't have a cell phone…despite being on her cell phone constantly in the office. He decided to give her one more chance, but gave her a lecture about how she needs to communicate properly about missing work, and one more incident will be an automatic firing. Next day, no call no show.
16. Balls Out
As a teenager, I worked at a bowling alley. Within an hour, a new girl was fired on the spot for dropping a ball on the foot of a complaining patron.
17. The Proof is In the Spit
My friend knows a guy he used to work with that got fired from a fast food joint for spitting in two hamburgers that were going to be served to his ex-wife and her new husband. So, the story goes, the guy's ex-wife with her new husband walked in and ordered a burger. The ex-wife happened to see her former husband making the hamburgers in the back of the restaurant.
The guy noticed his ex-wife was there and looked very jealous when her new husband emerged, too. They were smiling at each other, which apparently made the guy very angry—he was apparently abusive to his ex-wife. They got their order a few minutes later and left the restaurant. The husband, however, then had a gut feeling that the guy had messed with the burgers.
So, he opened the burgers to check, and indeed the guy had spat right in the burgers, plain as day. He marched back into the restaurant and demanded to see the manager, and pointed the finger at the guy, saying, "He did it." The manager immediately fired the guy on the spot. Don’t know what you expect, really.
18. The Old Days
My dad, now in his 70s, started work in the late 50s/early 60s. Like a lot of boys in post-conflict Britain, he was taken on as an apprentice, in his case as an electrician at a local engineering factory. A lot of the “skilled men” there had seen service during WWII. One of my father's mentors had been captured during the siege of Singapore and had spent several years as a POW under the Japanese.
Sometime during his apprenticeship, my father remembers a group of Japanese engineers and managers visiting the factory, probably to discuss the purchase of one or another of their products. On their tour of the factory, the chap I mentioned above calmly walked up to this group of Japanese, picked one up by his lapels, and tried to beat the life out of him.
The whole time, the dude was screaming his old army rank and serial number at him. He was dragged off by a bunch of his mates and fired right there, right on the spot. Obviously, a case of PTSD, the chap had spent several years being held by the Japanese and had been in a terrible state.
19. Heads Will Roll
This guy got fired just three hours into his first shift. He lost it serving an annoying Karen customer in a grocery shop, and his response was legendary. He threw a cabbage at her. The manager came and told him to go home because he was finished there. He wasn't surprised. I was standing next to him; that was an entertaining day.
20. Family Feud
My sister was fired on day one. My dad had his own small medical practice and would hire me and my sisters as our "first job" to be his receptionist and file insurance claims, so we could get some workplace experience before we went job hunting in the larger world. My older sister worked for him in high school for a year.
I worked for him for two years, then it came time for my younger sister to take over. I brought her to work to start training and said the number one rule in the office was, "At work he's not dad, he's the doctor and the boss." She sassed him in front of a patient her first day, with all the venom and sarcasm a teenage girl can muster when dealing with a parent asking her to do something.
He fired her on the spot and I had to drag her out of there. Mom told her at least she'd get paid for the couple of hours she managed to be employed.
21. No Means Yes This Time
A coworker called me and asked if I could work for her one Saturday. I told her no, because I had plans with friends that day. That Saturday rolls around. I'm in another town with friends, about an hour's drive from where I work. I get a call from work. "Hey, so-and-so said you were going to work her shift today."
I had to explain that I told her I couldn't come in and that I was around 50 miles away. She was told never to come back to work. Why did she think that would work?
22. Two-for-One Deal
He told me, “My ex-wife passed and there’s no one to take care of our kids.” He needed a week off to sort everything out. Then, the ex called to talk to him. Boom.
23. Read The Room
Within minutes of being hired, shown to his desk, and given a company email address, this new dude emails the entiiiiiire company (500+ employees) that he has pre-screeners on DVD for movies that were not even in theaters yet. I think that at the time, one of the ones he offered was Spider Man 2. And one of the Resident Evil movies, I think.
Lots of titles, he said, $10 each. Anyway, he was fired, out the door, in under two minutes, it was pretty amazing. After all, we were a game software company, and someone looking to make fast money on bootlegged stuff was, well...incompatible with corporate culture, let's say.
24. A Square Peg In A Round Hole
This incredibly strange office worker turned up each day with wet hair, wearing loose fitting pyjamas and shuffling around in her slippers. She lasted about a week before she was let go.
25. Photoflop
A dude I worked with badly photoshopped the face of a 40-something single mom that also worked there onto the body of some online smut photo. He then proceeded to show it around to the other female workers, like, “Look what this woman sent me, you should send me stuff too.” All this while he would continually brag about the girlfriend he had at home.
He got fired, then dumped by his girlfriend, and kicked out of their apartment.
26. Screw Me Twice, Shame on You
Our desks were separated by a 5-foot cubicle wall. He was under the mistaken impression that it totally blocked sound. Thus, I got to hear all his loud phone conversations, primarily his booty calls including those with his boss's fiancé. I figured it was none of my business and tried to ignore it. Well, there was a position in another department that I was interested in and as per procedure, I handed in an application to my talkative boss.
I didn't hear anything further and followed up a couple of days later, only to be told that something must have happened to the application. I filled out another one and handed it in. As I return to my desk, I hear the boss on the phone with a friend laughing about how he had just trashed my application again and how he was never going to let go of me. Little did he know, he was messing with the wrong person.
I go to my boss's boss and angrily offer my resignation, telling him what I had just overheard, explaining that I was constantly hearing his phone calls like his booty calls like with <woman's name> and <woman's name> and <boss's boss's fiance's name>. He got very quiet and told me to go back to my desk and he'll take care of everything. The next day I come in and boss is gone.
The day after, I have an interview with the other department (got the position). I tend to avoid office drama, but really, he should have stuck to screwing his boss's fiancé, and not tried to screw me as well.
27. Gaydar Has No Place in the Office
My boss asked me if I was gay, and had apparently started telling people I was. Then she asked why I didn’t hit on her or if I found her attractive. I really didn’t intend to get her fired. I just told her boss it kind of put me in a weird situation as I was new. I really think she just needed some education on that type of thing as it was at a hospital, and there wasn’t much training for management.
28. Smart Alec
This was a while ago at my old job. This new guy gets hired as a bus boy. He was super annoying and tried to insert himself into everyone's conversation whether they wanted him there or not. It only took a couple of hours for the whole restaurant to hate him. I was working the bar and he kept eating the bar fruit. I personally didn't care, but the manager did.
Manager comes over and tells him to stop eating the fruit. His response left me flabbergasted. He looks the manager in the eye and eats another piece of fruit. Manager says "Really?" followed by "Come with me to the office." New guy promptly replies with "Alright man, calm down” in a really testy, petulant voice. In front of me and like four other employees.
I wanted to slam my face into the ice bin, it was so cringey to witness. He promptly walked out the front door 10 minutes later without his uniform on. The worst thing about it was the manager was an insanely laid back guy. Heck, the whole restaurant was insanely laid back. You really had to try hard to get fired from this place.
Had he not been a total idiot about the reprimand, I'm almost positive he would have just gotten a slap on the wrist and kept the job.
29. Temptation Calls
I was hired to do tech support in a call center. On our first day of training, there were about 30 of us in a room, and we each had our own computer. The instructor said it was okay to use the computer for personal stuff during down time, but the only rules were no games and, obviously, no adult fare when it came to videos.
One guy got fired before lunchtime, because he just couldn't resist the videos.
30. Mirror, Mirror
This guy got hired, went through training and all that jazz. First day on the floor, he disappeared for three hours and then came back very not sober. A manager found him in the bathroom products aisle, staring at himself in the mirror. After firing the guy promptly, said manager looked at the security cameras. The footage revealed a bizarre truth.
The guy had been staring at himself for at least 30 minutes before he came along.
31. Special Sauce
A friend from high school got fired from his job at McDonald's after his long-time crush complained of having mounds of hair in her Big-Mac. With such a disturbing complaint on hand, the manager decided to take a look at the CCTV—and made a chilling discovery. He found that my friend had walked to the back, reached down his pants, and pulled some hair out and placed it in the sandwich.
He got fired on the spot, then came over to my house and told me the story. He was told to leave my house on the spot. People do weird things when they’re in love.
32. Extra-Curricular Activities
We had a new guy who got hired and was here for MAYBE a week. He would take long bathroom breaks, but no one thought much of it originally. He sat right at the doorway to the departments area, and one day his boss went to the bathroom and when he came back, the guy just had, er, intimate videos playing on his iPad that was propped up on his desk.
The guy turned and looked at him, reached over and hit the lock button, and said, "Can we just pretend this didn't happen?" No, no we can't. Gone pretty much immediately.
33. Unfriendly Competition
The one that always boggled my mind was the guy who wore a hat to his shift that had a large logo from a competing brand. I told him to take it off and he complied while whining, "But my hair is awful today." I told him he could buy one of ours or he could go home. A few minutes later, he was wearing it again.
I had the handbook at the ready and pointed out that he was violating policy and I would be writing him up—HR would've been proud. He huffed and went back to the break room, but when he emerged onto the sales floor, he had his hat on again. I told him to go home. He threw a couple of insults at me in front of witnesses and slinked out of the store.
I put the paperwork together and was ready to fire him in person but he never showed up to another shift.
34. Fake It Till You Break It
This engineer my company hired was a PhD and really hit it off with the guys in management. We had some female colleagues working under his direction, and they said he was an absolute jerk, demeaned their work, and blamed them for everything. Now, my colleagues were excellent formulation chemists, and he was brought on to lead a new formulation project and it wasn’t working.
He would tell them how to do it and it never worked, and then he kept blaming them for doing it wrong. My co-worker got fed up and called him on it during a big meeting. They even had a prepared presentation describing what they tried, how thoroughly they tried it, why what he proposed would never work, and an alternative solution.
The guy was so angry, but the management guys were extremely knowledgeable and started asking him questions, and it was clear he couldn’t answer. That’s when all his lies unraveled. Turns out, his wife has a PhD too, and she pretty much did all of his degree work for him, as they were both from a culture where women are not treated equally.
He knew absolutely nothing. Not only that, but once everyone got to talking, it was clear just how massive a jerk this guy was. Sadly, my colleagues had to deal with this for months before everything was said and done.
35. Fired With Laser Precision
I used to work at a laser tag facility. It was mostly high schoolers who worked there. One guy had only been working there a couple of months when he came in on a field trip with some classmates, including his girlfriend. He thought it would be a good idea to sneak his girlfriend into the fog room inside the maze during their game, get it on, then brag about it to the management team.
Underage whoopie at work is, unsurprisingly, not something you should be engaging in, and definitely not something you should be publicizing. He got fired on the spot, and I'd occasionally run into him on the bus afterward.
36. For the Guild
We had a new guy who was pretty quiet, not the best worker ever, but good enough. Another guy was talking hobbies with him to try to get him out of his shell a bit. Turned out they both played WoW. The new guy lit up. Great, right? They talked a bit more and then it came out they played different factions. Suddenly, things weren’t so good, but I couldn’t have predicted what would happen next.
The new guy had an absolute meltdown on the spot. I mean, it was so dramatic that we thought he was joking, but it became apparent he wasn’t. The next couple of days he refused to talk to the other guy. He got told that wasn’t okay, especially over an incident like this. The next couple of days after that, the new guy just didn’t show up.
It was a pretty easy decision to terminate him.
37. Out In The Open
The new guy drove a forklift into a fire hydrant, in front of a safety rep for the company. His supervisor was called over, and he immediately tells the supervisor a disturbing confession. He said quite plainly to us that he won’t pass a substance test, as he used his only bottle of clean urine earlier that day when he got hired.
Everybody standing there immediately burst into laughter, which continued as security (also laughing) escorted him off site. Even the supervisor was all smiles...just gave him a pat on the back and wished him the best of luck. It was wild.
38. Losing The Popularity Contest
I worked in a restaurant for my first job in high school. I was about 16 when we hired on my co-worker’s little cousin. This kid was a year younger than me and a total jerk; no one liked him because of his attitude and behavior issues. Anyways, the kid gets hired and at first he's chill. Him and I both LOVED the same band, so we had a mutual bond and a common thing to talk about.
Other than that, though, I couldn't stand him much. During his first week, he starts to step on people’s toes quite easily because he notices some of us who are friends liked roasting each other, and he thought he could join in. However, the comments he was making weren’t silly banter, they were full-blown rude comments that made some of us mad.
We also started to notice that this kid didn't do his job properly, either. He worked the dish pit, and when working alone, his lack of proper cleaning of dishes, cutlery, and etc. threw everyone behind on their closing tasks because we'd have to ask him to re-wash literally everything due to food chunks being all over things.
After two to three weeks, a number of us complained to management. This kid’s older cousin even complained about him it got so bad. The last straw, I think, was him taking this dishwasher sprayer and starting to spray people as they walked into the kitchen. He got screamed at by a number of us and was fired a few days later when management noticed how angry all of us were with this kid.
39. Up In The Air
I called a temp agency to get someone to help me count inventory. They sent a guy over with a cast on his arm...that was my first red flag. Still, I went with it because we were just counting parts and I thought hey, he can handle this. So we get started, and then I go out to lunch. I came back to a completely inexplicable sight.
This dude was in my office chair zoned out and drooling on himself with a can of air duster in his lap. I kicked him awake and escorted him out of my warehouse. Never used that temp agency again.
40. Reply All
This guy hadn't even started yet and just sent this bizarre introductory email out to the whole entire company, which ended with incredibly explicit details about himself. In it, he started off by claiming he liked anime and semi-embarrassing stuff like that, but ended up confessing to all his intimate bedroom preferences by the wrap-up.
To the whole company. He got fired before he even started. He supposedly apologized profusely, saying his friend played a prank on him, but the damage had already been done.
41. Didn’t Sign Up for Homework
My boss would show up at my house after work hours to discuss work stuff. When I asked him to stop, he tried to fire me. When at the HR meeting the following day, I explained my story and showed them the video from my door camera. They literally go "John (bosses name), we've talked about this" and asked me to leave. Two hours later he walks out and announces that he's leaving.
42. Mic Drop
I worked in a bar with an awful boss. He would always flirt with the young female bar staff and make us all uncomfortable, even though he was 50 years old. We all knew his wife and two young children, but about six months into me working there he began to “date” a 22-year-old customer.
By date, I mean he used to go downstairs to his office and sleep with her—all while he was on shift. No one was allowed to talk about it but we all knew. He knocked her up quite quickly and ended up breaking up with his wife, but he still flirted with his staff relentlessly even when his new baby was born.
He once told a male employee that he liked asking female bar staff to pick up things from low shelves so we would bend over and he could check out our butts. He always broke health and safety rules if he could get out of doing a task he didn’t want to. He was prolific at asking bar staff to clean human waste—vomit/poop customers had done on the floor—even though legally anyone cleaning that stuff needed to have passed a certain health and safety qualification.
I spoke to my assistant manager about this and she confirmed that only management can do it, and I should refuse next time. One day he demanded I cleaned up vomit in the male toilets, and I refused, repeating what the assistant manager told me. My boss went absolutely mad—he wasn’t used to people standing up to him. He told me to come downstairs to his office to speak about it.
At that moment I knew I wanted to quit, so I told him I won’t be going downstairs with him. He asked me why, and I replied: “The last girl who went down there with you ended up getting pregnant.” Lost my job instantly but it was totally worth it.
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43. A Case of Call Center Madness
I was once a supervisor in a call center. I came out of the bathroom, turned the corner, and saw a phone agent sitting there in his cubicle. He had taken the laces out of one of his shoes and had lit it on fire. He was just sitting there watching it. I said, "This might sound like a joke, considering what's going on here...but you're fired." He laughed. I said, "I'm serious. Get out."
He went to HR to complain about me. When he told them what had happened, they escorted him out of the building.
44. Some Men Just Want To Watch The World Burn
I spent my summers in college working as a laborer for a construction company. Anyway, we were doing a bunch of renovations in an active hospital, so noise and dust were a huge concern. We were a small crew and just starting renovations on an area with a super tight schedule, so the company hired a subcontractor for some of the work.
Enter these two clowns who show up to do some demolition work. Foreman gives them the talk about how they may be used to doing things a certain way, but this is an active hospital so he'd rather the work take longer than for them to make a huge mess or a lot of noise. An hour later, we apparently got multiple complaints about the noise and the mess.
So the foreman calls me up and says to go over there and clean up NOW, and that he'd be by shortly to see what the heck was going on. These dudes had dust and broken wall everywhere. I could hear them half way down the hall, just smashing away at everything without a care in the world. But it was about to get so much worse.
The foreman shows up and we walk into the room to witness this dude standing on a pile of rubble, swinging a sledgehammer over his head at a brick wall that he's removed the bottom from. Somehow, the rest of this wall is still hanging from the ceiling, I have no idea how. Guy wasn't even wearing a hard hat, apparently oblivious that at any moment that wall might give way and crush him.
The foreman lost his mind on these guys. Kicked them out immediately, and got on the phone with their company and told them he didn't want to see these guys on our site ever again. Lots of choice four-letter words were used in the call, and he even threatened to fire the subcontractor entirely and get someone else to do the work.
45. How Was I Supposed to Know What Day It Was??
I was working in a warehouse with a woman who was normally very cheerful. One week she was looking a bit down so as a light-hearted joke, I took a box and wrote "CAUTION: HUMAN HEAD" on it, with some red marker for blood drips and such, and put it on her desk. Wasn't a great joke, but thought it'd at least raise a smile. Now from the context, I imagine you're thinking "No, this is a bad idea"—and you'd be right. The woman came in, saw the box, and ran to the toilet crying.
Turned out it was the anniversary of her brother's passing. He had been decapitated in a motorcycle accident. Everyone else knew, so they assumed that I did. No amount of arguing would convince them otherwise and it wasn't worth dragging it out, so I left. I have since moved on to bigger and better things as a result.
46. You Can’t Handle the Truth
I told my Muslim customers that the food they were being served was not halal, despite being told by my boss to pretend it was. Fired instantly, but I'd do it again.
47. Under New Management
I owned a construction business, and we recently hired three new employees due to expansion. I didn't get to meet them yet, as my business partner was the one who interviewed them. He also watched them get started on the first day and would check in on them most mornings. Along with the new hires, we promoted one of our best workers as manager to oversee them.
So after a few days, I noticed that we were behind schedule on the job. This wasn't all that surprising because we had the new hires, but I decided it was best to go in and check it out to make sure everything was going well. So, I call up my manager and tell him to go to a different site and that I will take over at the place with the new guys.
I arrive at the site a half an hour late due to traffic, and everyone is already hard at work. In fact, they are working efficiently and correctly on everything. I asked them a few questions about what they are doing and so on and get all the right answers. I figured the delay was just the first two days of learning and am very pleased that everything was picked up and seemed to go well.
Now, it is important that at this point I didn't actually introduce myself and nobody asked who I was, so it seems everyone just assumed that I was just another worker from the company they never met before. So, two hours before we are supposed to finish for the day, I discover something that makes all the problems make sense.
A guy comes over and says, "Hey, just so you know, we're all gonna head out now, but clock in that we worked the whole day. The manager allows it, and the owners never notice." So that is the story of how I fired three new hires on the very first day that I met them... and also how I had to fire our best worker. Not a good day for me.
48. Not Here to Play Games
I used to work at a video game store (I'm sure you can figure out which one) as an assistant manager. A few months after I was hired, I was moved to a different location. The manager there was the laziest jerk I've ever met. When I got there, the store was a mess. The game cases were supposed to be displayed on the wall alphabetically—none were.
The accessories were supposed to be arranged according to system—everything was mixed together. It was nearly impossible to find anything in that store. And the store itself was tiny. Besides not cleaning and organizing, this guy just did nothing. He would spend his shift in the minuscule back room "organizing". He would take a 1-2 hour lunch break almost every day, then go in and change his time sheet to show that he was only gone for 30 minutes.
Granted, the store was slow as heck, but still. I got tired of his BS after a couple of weeks, so I went to the district manager with my concerns. He and the regional manager had me keep tabs on him for a while (noting when he'd leave for his break and when he'd come back). Then, when they had enough evidence, they fired him. I don't know if there were things going on behind the scenes that I wasn't privy to, but I would guess probably.
49. Loose Lips Sink Ships
This one woman was in and out within two weeks. She was a little abrasive, but seemed smart enough. Then she started complaining to the guy sitting next to her that the work was so boring. And talking up how she was just watching TV all day, and not even reading the stuff she was supposed to be working on, just writing whatever she felt like.
He told management, and she was gone a few days later.
50. Honesty Isn’t The Best Policy
When I was 18, I got a job at a grocery store along with three others, and we all started training together. On the first day, we were training in the evening, and one girl asked to go home because she said her head hurt. They said fine and she wandered off and clocked out. Then we watched her do something supremely stupid.
She went to grab a grocery cart and started filling it with booze. The store manager walked over and asked her if she was having a party. She said yes. Didn't even try to come up with an excuse. Just, "Yeah, I am, so I needed to leave early on my first day." Well, he fired her.
51. Wined & Fired
Someone I worked with got fired for having a BAC of 0.33 while on the job. She had taken boxed vino from the grocery store where she was a pharmacist, hid the stuff in the bathroom trash can, took many, many bathroom trips, and was caught on a fluke because a higher-up came to wish a tech good luck on their last day of work.
Her keys were taken away, and somehow she took her pants off. She was prancing around the waiting room in her underwear, then she put her pants back on and escaped to a nearby Starbucks when asset protection came by to scoop her up to be fired. Later, I found out the heartbreaking truth. She turned out to be pregnant during this incident and was facing a divorce.
Something finally cracked, I guess.
52. 90 Day Fiancé Called
I used to work at the US Patent Office as a patent examiner. One of my fellow patent examiners was from Africa and was running a secret arranged-marriage-for-green-card business out of his office, no joke. He was eventually caught, fired, and detained, thankfully. What a crazy dude.
53. You Get the Chair
A large corporation with lots of cubicles. One employee who had a really sweet office chair was fired. After the employee was fired, he requested his office chair back. After proving it was bought by the fired employee and not company, HR went back to get it a week later for the fired employee. Well, the sweet office chair was missing.
HR does an investigation and finds a manager in another department with a sweet office chair. HR asks the manager where he got a sweet office chair. The manager claimed the chair was his for years, lying to HR. HR has the fired employee identify his chair. It’s the manager’s "chair for years." The manager is fired from a higher than six-figure job, all because he lied about a dang chair.
54. Not A Good Fit
My document-processing clerk was getting married and going on his honeymoon, so I got a short-term temp. It wasn't a temp-to-hire, everything was out in the open through a legitimate temp agency who generally did pretty good screening. Well, not this time. The temp's very first day, they show up with a box of things: Photos, mugs, office equipment, stuff to decorate a cubicle with.
I advised them not to unpack, since we were getting right into training. Within two hours after I let them go independently on a computer with a "Let me know if you need anything or have any questions," they said, "This mouse is hurting my wrist. It gave me carpal tunnel. I'm going to need worker's comp paperwork." Uh...what?
I made an immediate call to the agency ending this contract, then told the temp, "Your paperwork is at the temp agency office, go ahead and go see your rep there." They left their box of stuff behind; I had to have the temp agency come pick it up.
55. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
I worked at an Arby's during college. This customer came in and ordered some food. They told the cashier they were new in town and asked, "Where's a good place to eat in town?" The correct answer was, according to the manager, "Arby's is the best place in town." The answer the cashier gave was not that...and she was fired shortly after for “promoting the competition.”
56. Nice to Meet You, Ladies
My assistant manager announced to a female co-worker that he had officially named both of her breasts after working with her for three years. This was the second time he had said something inappropriate to her within a week and had to be let go. He was a 47-year-old virgin who still lived with his ailing parents.
I didn’t know who to be sorry for the most.
57. The Stories of My Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated
One fellow contractor had a safety guy for six months. One weekend, he took a trip out of town for non-work-related reasons, but used the company truck and charged it all on the company credit card. On his way up there, he ran a random person off the road, who just so happened to be one of the owners of another contracting company who worked closely with the one who employed this guy.
Shortly after he was fired. I'm sure charges were being brought against him. A couple of weeks later, his wife calls his former employer saying that he had called her randomly and ended his own life in his truck on the side of the highway. Me and another colleague went searching for records of this guy, but couldn’t find anything.
No stories in the paper. Thought it was weird, but whatever. It turns out this guy falsified all his qualifications and job experience. Fast forward a month later, and I heard through the grapevine that the original contractor who had employed this guy received a call. It was from some contractors across the country because the so-called deceased guy applied for work there and put them down on his resume as his previous employer.
That’s right, he faked his own demise to get out of trouble with the company, then proceeded to put them down on his resume not expecting anyone to check his references. Not exactly the brightest move.
58. Sent
I'd have to go with the guy who in the span of 24 hours did three of the most irresponsible things I’ve ever seen. He started a genuine fistfight with another employee. On top of that, it was on camera, with witnesses. He then called the authorities and said the other guy did it, trying to press charges. I just sent along the video—but it gets worse.
He trespassed on the property the following day and screamed at my boss—once again on camera, with witnesses—then called the authorities and said my boss did it. I just sent the video. And it didn’t even end there. Finally, he hurt himself somehow and went to the hospital, where he told the doctor he'd been attacked at work.
The doctor found no injury consistent with his story and well yeah, camera...
59. Where Is the Love!?
I was a florist and had a 40-something woman delivering for me. I received a call from the building manager of a brand-new office building, with only one tenant, telling me my driver wrote on the elevator wall with a sharpie. They had video showing that she was the only person to use the elevator during the time the vandalism took place.
The worst part? This happened a few days before Valentine's Day, my busiest day of the year.
60. Give Me Just One Reason
I was the sous chef at a small, quaint New England country inn. We had a dishwasher we were pretty sure was drinking at work named Jim. He'd show up with a quart bottle of orange juice that was a little too full and not quite the right color. He would also get pretty sloppy by the end of the night. The chef and I both knew he was drinking.
I told the chef we should just grab his bottle and check it. The chef said he checked with the owner and she told him we couldn't, though I’m not sure why. Even so, we were looking for a reason to get rid of him…and then that moment happened. One day, I slipped in the bake shop and completely wiped out in front of everyone.
I dropped a couple of cheesecakes I was carrying out of the oven and spilled the water bath all over myself. Burned the heck out of myself and I was angry, I'll admit as much. I carried the remains of my cheesecakes into the dish pit, just cursing a blue streak. The dishwasher said to me: "You kiss your momma with that mouth?"
I turned around and said, "I kissed yours." He then started challenging me to a fight and said he was going to kick my butt. Which I found pretty funny, so I yelled to the chef, "Hey chef, Jim says he's going to kick my butt.” Chef asked him if that was true, and Jim said "Yeah, I’m going to ruin him.” The chef simply said, "Great, you're fired."
He stormed off and left his "orange juice" behind.
61. Not Worth the Sum of His Car Parts
My boss was stealing $5,000 in parts for his personal cars. He also was turning customers into cash jobs for a discount and then pocketing about half the money. I went to HR asked the proper way to report theft. I followed what HR has said, and then we were both fired. The best thing that ever happened to me.
62. Who Protects Us from the Protectors?
So, this boss wasn't terrible until we found out what he was doing. I actually used to like him a lot more than my main boss. In high school, I worked as a martial arts instructor. A lot of my friends went to this martial arts school and not actually my high school, so I was very close to them. One of my friends happened to be 3 years older than me so when I was 16, she was 19.
One of our bosses (not the owner of the school but second in command) was an older man who was a retired law enforcement officer. Typically, my friend who was 19 would work the desk after teaching and close up the school at the end of the night (mop, vacuum, etc). Typically that late, the only people there were our male boss and her.
Obviously, you can see where this is going...bottom line a few of us helped her get proof he was harassing/assaulting her to get him fired because our main boss (older woman) didn't believe her and accused her of starting trouble. Well, it turns out he had actually done this to many other people who had never reported it and went off to college/quit, but he only ever did it to people who were legally of age (17+).
He was fired and banned from the property, but that was the extent of his punishment. He actually opened his own martial arts school a few years later, so I'm sure nothing has changed. Honestly, this whole situation made me really sad and kinda ruined my whole view of my school but unfortunately my area has a lot of small tight-knit communities, so I know many teachers (regular school) who did inappropriate things (slept with student, struck a child, etc.) never got in trouble and were just asked to resign quietly.
Not even fired. Most of these teachers went off to other larger schools in the area, got caught but this time got punished.
63. The Facebook Warrior Slays
I used to work at a hotel near an airport, so pretty much-guaranteed business 24/7/365. The housekeeping supervisor was a straight-up sadist: Putting a pregnant housekeeper in the smoker’s section on purpose, refusing to resupply, and even taking from one housekeeper for having the audacity to ask for a schedule change…
She berated and laughed at another employee battling obvious mental health issues. She even let her adult stepdaughter "move into" rooms listed as "vacant" without paying for them. What finally got her evil butt fired? A former employee making a social media post describing ALL OF THIS. The day she got canned, everybody celebrated.
One of the housekeepers even started singing.
64. Hate Never Wins
My parents owned a café and had just hired a new employee. On his first training shift, my mum had introduced herself as the boss. Although my dad owns the business, my mum is just as much one of the bosses. My mum is British and my dad is Spanish. My dad was working in the back kitchen and my mum was teaching the guy the table numbers and introducing staff.
When she explained that some of the kitchen staff hadn't got really strong English skills the bloke went off on one saying, "Well I am glad you are finally giving the British a chance, foreigners that come to Britain need to speak English or they should be kicked out of the country immediately!" My dad steps in and explains that he moved to this country without knowing a word of English, built his business up from nothing, and now speaks five languages—much more than this British guy who could only speak English.
My dad explains everyone should be given a chance but that this British guy had blown his chance to work at my dad's establishment. He fired him on the spot and banned him from coming back. He was replaced by an Italian lady that my dad speaks to on occasion in Italian just to brush up his language skills.
65. Dine And Dash
I work in construction. We had two new hires who were friends and starting on the same day. The boss told one to take a coffee order and come back. He took everyone's money, then said he needed his friend to go with him because it was a big order. They never came back.
66. Happy New Year!
I hated my corporate job and was planning to wait one more week before I turned in my resignation so I could get paid for Christmas and New Year’s. Finally lost it on my boss though. What I said got me fired, but it felt so good, I'd do it again in a second: "If you spent one-third of the time actually doing your job that you spent covering up for not doing your job, you could pretty much sit in your office and listen to talk radio for the rest of the day and nobody would have a problem with you."
The CEO was standing on the other side of the door. He was like "I'm real sorry, but..." and off I went. I could tell he didn't disagree with me. I had another job within seven hours to start the New Year with.
67. Food Fight
I waited tables at a restaurant/bar and this blasted chick tried to chuck a hot fajitas skillet at me with no success. I then threw her drink right back at her and the guy sitting with her in retaliation. This resulted in the termination of my employment. I kinda felt bad because the guy seemed nice, but sometimes, these things happen.
68. I’m Not Lovin’ It
Worked at a McDonald's in high school at 17. I was being harassed by a co-worker twice my age. He said some really awful stuff to me that made me afraid to come to work. They refused to switch my shifts. They also were working me too much for being under 18 and tried to get me to sign a consent form saying I knew I'd be working the hours I was, when I constantly asked for different hours.
I called the corporate offices and told them. My parents even got a lawyer involved. I quit and a few weeks later a co-worker I went to school with said two of the shift managers, the supervisor, and the store manager were all terminated and barred from working with the company again. They brought in a few temporary people who were high up and ended up sniffing out the other bad employees.
69. Through the Firewall
I didn't do the firing, but a company I worked for was growing rapidly and needed people quickly. So, they weren't too picky about who they hired. They hired this one guy, "Rick" who was kind of strange. He seemed harmless enough but was just kind of weird and socially awkward. He started off okay, but after a couple of months, his work started trailing off.
His supervisor spoke to him to find out why, thinking maybe something at home was going on or there was some other issue. Rick said all was okay and left it at that. However, there was no change in his work. Long story short, the LAN guys started looking into his computer usage and found that he was trying to log into smut sites at work.
Like, all day long, and he was being repeatedly thwarted by the firewall. Then he started doing searches on how to get around the firewall, then tried getting around the firewall and then tried logging into the smut sites again. He did all of this on his work-issued computer on the company's network, on company time.
Yes, after that all came to light, he was quickly shown the door for "misuse of company property." Looking back, I kind of feel sorry for him. I'm guessing he was either just that stupid or battling some kind of addiction if he couldn't abstain for 40 hours per week. Poor dude, but you gotta do what you gotta do.
70. Cruel And Unusual Punishment
I worked in a grocery store for a while. The new guy took a lobster out of the tank and removed the elastic bands on its claws, then proceeded to put it back in the tank. The thing destroyed all the other lobsters in the tank. Yeah, that guy didn't last long.
71. Duct Tape: The Infinite Solution
I hired a tech for my PC service shop after months of searching for someone who could keep up with the pace of a very busy shop. On day three, a regular customer came in, set his newly upgraded PC on the bench, and motioned me over. He has just had a new motherboard installed and wanted me to take a little look.
The new guy had installed his motherboard with freaking DUCT TAPE. I asked him where he even found duct tape in my shop and he said he brought it from home. I told him, "Grab your tape and the rest of your junk and go." He responded with, "But I’m a good technician!" and all I could do is shake my head. I still feel bad about how I handled that, firing him on the spot in front of a customer.
It was just SO wrong, I could not even begin to think how he thought that was the right thing to do.
72. Thinking Backwards Ahead
When I was a bank teller, a fellow teller got fired for stuffing her purse with a strap of $100s every morning. That’s $10,000. But here’s the most interesting part. She didn’t take it home. At the end of the day, she would put the strap back into her teller drawer. She did this for months and months apparently, without anyone noticing a thing. And why would they? The drawer always balanced.
When the camera auditors finally did catch it on tape, she was confronted and fired. When they asked her why she put a strap of money in her purse each day but always put it back, she said that if the bank were ever robbed then she could just take the money home because everybody would’ve assumed it was taken by the thief.
73. He’s Going Down
It was day one of training, and within the sixth hour of an eight-hour shift. I worked in an old crank handle service elevator at a private residential condominium. Basically, this place was for very, very, very wealthy people. We told this new guy to just shut up and stare straight ahead while he was on the elevator with the residents. Don't speak unless spoken to. After all, old rich people are mean and don’t care about you.
Well, what's the new guy do? Starts a conversation right away. But that wasn’t even the worst part. He actually asks the resident, "How much money do you make?”
74. Through the Cracks
When I was working at Burger King, our restaurant manager was away on maternity leave, so we had someone from another store come in over that time to fill the role. He ended up hiring someone who had worked there five to six years previously. The few staff that had known her before she’d left had hated her but had no idea why she left.
She even passed all the checks from head office before she was hired. The restaurant manager comes back about a month after this new girl been hired, takes one look at her, and RAGES. Like my RM is yelling at this girl, she’s yelling at the manager that hired her, and all the crew that had known her when she was here last.
Obviously, none of us knew what was going on, but then the crazy story came out. It turns out this girl hadn’t left way back when. She’d been fired, and management at the time hadn’t told anyone that, just that she’d quit. This girl had scammed BK by pretending to be pregnant. She had fake ultrasounds, a baby shower, the whole lot. She then took paid maternity leave so she could go work somewhere else.
I have no idea how she got through the head office checks, but she was fired that very day.
75. Dress For The Job You Want
This was a moving company, in the mid-west. Most people didn’t make it through the first week, as they will hire literally anyone who can pass a substance test. Turnover was really bad, but I guess that’s the nature of the job. Still, I'll never forget Jeremy. Jeremy was 18 and did not apply for colleges, so his parents made him get a job.
He was hired as a mover, as is everyone. He shows up the first day to roll-call in a full suit and tie asking where his desk is. This was a group full of former convicts, high school dropouts, and generally rough dudes trying to make a living. We laughed so hard. Jeremy went right back home. Next day, Jeremy's mom shows up to give the manager a piece of her mind. We laughed even harder.
76. Over the Coals
I had an employee that was going to get fired for simply showing up late constantly with no legit reason. During the term meeting, she tells me another employee cut the brake lines in her car. It’s obvious this was to save herself from being fired. She didn’t realize that something like that gets the authorities involved. She was terminated, and then detectives showed up to her house to get statements.
Of course, there was no evidence of lines being cut and now she’s dealing with the authorities for making false statements.
77. Fast Food, Big Lies
This was just a summer job at a fast food place. We had a new girl start, and within two days it was apparent she was an idiot and everyone knew it. You could already see the manager questioning his decision. Then, on her third day of work, she said she couldn't come in because her mom was in a car accident and in the hospital.
Turns out that's an easy thing to disprove in a relatively small town.
78. With Friends Like These…
I met a dude through another dude, and he and his pregnant girlfriend had nowhere to go. I had an insane amount of acreage and I felt bad for the guy, so I let him stay in his RV on my land, and I even hooked him up to running water and electricity, all of which I paid for. He had a part-time job delivering furniture and never made enough to pay me the paltry 100 bucks he promised to pay me every month for helping them out.
When I'd confront him, he'd tell me he just never worked enough hours to provide for his girlfriend and pay me. So, proactively I got him a job at the hardware store I was assistant manager at until I finished my degree. This was 11 years ago. He came to work, and after two hours on his first day, just left. Like completely walked out.
He went back to the RV, which was parked next to my house, and never said anything and never returned. Told me it was a bad job that was beneath him. It seriously ruined my reputation at that store and luckily that wasn't my career path or anything.
79. Busted
I worked as an internal audit intern for a local municipality. I was 20 years old and hadn't even taken an audit class yet. After a few weeks, I realized quickly that I was underqualified for the job. However, I still tried to learn and work my tail off. I noticed there were some issues with the policies and procedures in place.
For example, missing money and weak controls. Anytime I brought it up, the manager would sweep it under the rug and ignore it. Long story short, I had a huge argument with her and she fired me. But that's not the end of the story. Not by a long shot. Three months later, the FBI show up at my door. They asked me a few questions about my old manager.
Turns out she conspired with the mayor to accept donations in exchange for certain actions. Not sure what those actions were. Either way, she got fired and got charged, along with ten other city officials.
80. The Trash Magnet
One guy regularly called in saying that he was hungover due to company drinks. However, I was the one paying for those drinks and he had (at most) two pints prior to leaving any of these events.
81. I Don’t Do Fire
I am a chef at an upscale restaurant, the sauté cook has to prepare one lobster dish on his station that involves a technique called deglazing. The pan catches on fire briefly and flames up. When you do it correctly—it’s hard to do it incorrectly—the booze is cooked off and the flame goes out.
Every time he made this dish, he would deglaze the pan, catch it on fire, and then blow it out, blowing his own germs and nastiness all over someone’s food and everything in the blast radius. That was a week ago. I fired him after he did it multiple times after being asked not to. Maybe it’s because of the current state of affairs, but I couldn’t believe a trained cook would do that.
82. A Light Misunderstanding
I worked in an office and they hired a girl from a temp agency to help me. She wouldn't do a darn thing unless I walked her through each step after telling her she had to do it. Hey, an estimate just arrived on the fax RIGHT NEXT TO YOU, complete the quote and send it back. Come to find out she was playing spider and solitaire on her computer.
She was also sneaking out back and the warehouse guys thought she was using substances. I told my boss to get rid of her, I would rather work alone than babysit her, so he called the temp agency and told them to stop sending her. The next day, I couldn’t believe my eyes. She showed up, so the boss sent her home and called the agency saying, “Hey, she is useless, stop sending her.”
Then, she showed up again the next day! This went on for over a week. The people at the temp agency said they told her to stop showing but she kept coming in every morning, mind you usually 10 to 20 minutes late. My boss wouldn't say anything to her face so finally, I said, “Hey, we can't afford to pay you so we had to let you go through the temp agency. They should have told you.” She was all, “Oh I thought they were joking.” I was so glad she was gone.
83. I Laugh in the Face of Danger
I worked at a large bank as a teller through school. The branch was at a not so great side of town and had large bulletproof glass separating the tellers from the customers. One day, a man came up to my co-worker’s window and slid a note through the tray saying he had a piece and demanded the money in his drawer.
My friend looked at the note, laughed, threw it in the trash, and continued counting, processing a transaction for the drive-through. The man was so confused. He stood there another 20-30 seconds and left. I didn't know any of this was taking place. After he left I asked my co-worker what that guy wanted. "Oh, he just tried to rob us." It turned into a whole big deal at the branch.
Surprisingly enough, that was not the policy for handling a hold-up. A full investigation was done, and my co-worker was fired.
84. If Only We Could All Get Fired This Way
The startup I worked for was bought by a gigantic company; the new EvilCorp proceeds to screw over all of my employees. Got all of them (who wanted it) into better places, then stopped working almost entirely with our products.
So I spent 2 years basically milking EvilCorp’s wallet for all it was worth, while doing very little actual work. Eventually, I made my new evil boss furious enough to get myself in trouble, and then leveraged his desire to get me out of there for a decent “Pay me to quit” package.
85. Nowhere Is Safe
I had a food and beverage manager that brought a coffee to his female assistant manager on inventory day when the two of them would be alone performing inventory. She drank about half the coffee, started feeling dizzy, and saw there was a heavy table pushed up against the door. She freaked out and got out of the area. But it didn’t end there.
She went to HR and they tested the coffee and it was roofied. Definitely the most interesting firing I was involved in.
86. Can’t Play With The Big Boys
I worked at a Doggie Day Care. For group play, dogs were put in rooms according to size, and we would rotate through the rooms during our shifts. They hired a new girl and on her first day, she went into the big dog room and cried hysterically because she was afraid of them. Unsurprisingly, I don’t think she made it two hours.
87. Out Of Her League
I got hired as a long-term temp with one other person to do some basic data entry work at a major brand. It was also at their corporate headquarters, so pretty prestigious. Anyway, we went through all of this on-boarding stuff in the morning that required us to get photo IDs and figure out parking and all that kind of stuff.
Then after two or three hours, we were introduced to one of the employees in our new department, who began going over what we were going to be doing. None of it seemed overly difficult and I figured that while it was a new system I had never used before, I'd be able to work it out in a few days as long as I asked questions and took notes.
And that was the thing that made me realize that the other person who got hired with me probably lied on her resume and was completely out of her depth. She didn't take any notes and didn't ask any questions. And whenever I glanced at her, I could see flashes of panic on her face. In hindsight, it could have only gone one way.
So, lunchtime came, and when we came back, she said that another company had called her and offered her a permanent position and she couldn't work with us any longer. Both me and the person training us knew what was going on, but I'll give the other lady credit for finding a way out without losing face too badly. The takeaway here is: Yes, "Fake It Until You Make It" can and does work. But you gotta be able to fake it.
88. Radio Silence
My co-worker quit his job—which was a great job, great pay, and great benefits—to work in a radio repair place. I mean, gotta do what you love and he was also a big radio enthusiast. Except, well, he got fired the first day on the job for taking parts for his own radios at home. Took him over a year to get back with us.
Frankly, I’m surprised they rehired him. He then got fired for being a security risk about a year or so later.
89. Artistic License
I worked in the signage industry for many years. One day, some guy walks in looking for work and claiming to be a sign writer. My boss asks him if he has brushes, and he says absolutely. So my boss says ok, we need someone to go and paint a 5-meter logo on the wall at the gym. It's basically a couple of circles with Helvetica text in between and a stylized dancing man.
Pretty basic stuff. We give him the layout and the paint and off the guy goes. Four or five hours later, we get a call from the owner of the gym. He tells my boss to come and fetch this guy before he has some kind of breakdown inside the gym. We get there, and he has literally got two tiny little artists’ brushes. A number 1 and a number 4 or something, and he is trying to freehand this freaking 5-meter circle with them.
I almost cracked a rib trying not to laugh at this guy. He was sweating bullets trying to get this done. No tape, no chalk line. Not even a normal 2-inch paintbrush. Just this little 4mm round paintbrush and he's painting this thick circle by eye. We laughed about that for days.
90. New Guy In Town
I was fired on my second day as a line cook at a Mitzel’s Restaurant in Washington State back in the 90s. Turns out, I was hired just to threaten the job security of a long-time line cook with an attitude problem, and to keep him in line. He got the message and apologized to the manager, and I was fired for "breaking a yolk when flipping fried eggs" one time.
I'd been a line cook for a few years by then and thought I was doing pretty good. Well, guess not!
91. Telephone Game
My paranoid, sociopath boss wiretapped all internal phone calls and made life miserable for all who worked in that department. So, I came up with an ingenious plan to get him fired. After moving over 1,200 miles to the job location, I obviously called my wife frequently to discuss the job and family progress in moving there.
However, during those calls, I spun a story about how all of his top managers were plotting against him, which enraged him, and he took out his anger on them. Eventually they went to the company owner and complained, and he was fired the next day.
92. A Happy Ending
We got a new contract for two receptionists to sit at our front desk. The company did not send their sharpest knives in the drawer because it was a low-dollar contract for only one year. You could consider the positions temporary. They sent a guy that my security manager called "Sticks." He was incredibly malnourished and thin.
We had a front door that was double door paned glass. I always exited through the side door and would look in through the glass doors every day when I left for home. On Sticks' second day, I looked in through the glass at the dark reception area and saw one of the office chairs behind the reception counter as it slowly spun.
I entered back in through the side door and came into the back of reception. I found Sticks laying on the floor with an ergonomic office chair that had fallen on top of him. His head was bleeding from where he struck the floor or some other object. Also, in my peripheral vision, I saw a can of compressed air, the type for cleaning keyboards.
Sticks said he was perfectly fine. I helped him up and sent him home. Over the next few days, other admin folks reported to me that they kept finding Sticks collapsed in the reception area when no one had been around. I finally called his corporate supervisor to come take him away. When the supervisor arrived, Sticks had locked himself in the supply closet and refused to talk to me.
I could hear him huffing air behind the door. The supervisor talked to him through the door and finally escorted him back to company headquarters. They fired him. I called the company, and I learned that Sticks was a former service member who had served in combat. Looking at his résumé, I knew he was also a former EOD team member. I connected the dots in a tragic way.
I suspected he had substance problems stemming from PTSD and head trauma. I still had his contact information, so I got in touch with him a week later. From then on, I coached him every day until I finally got him an appointment with a volunteer from AMVETS who got him and his family help and care. Today, I wish I knew where he was (this was more than 5 years ago).
I hope that he took advantage of the help offered to him. Because of this, I am going to text him right now and see how he is doing.
93. If I’m Going Down, You’re All Coming With Me
I used to work at a pizza place and the store I worked at was appalling, dirty, unsanitary, poorly managed, the works. So about a week into the job, my boss added me to a group page on Facebook where employees would swap shifts and the boss could talk to us all. One day, she posted pictures of the state of the kitchen, telling us to clean it as we had the big boss paying a visit.
So, I took a screenshot of her post and shared it widely on social media. My boss found out and promptly fired me, but a few days later I saw that the shop had closed down while it looked for new staff and management. Not only did I get myself fired, but I also got about 15 other teenagers and adults fired. Not too bad if I do say so myself.
94. The Higher They Creep, The Harder They Fall
It was my supervisor. It got to the point that I had decided to quit. I had my resignation letter in my purse but decided to let his boss know why I was quitting. The supervisor would talk about all the people on our team constantly, but only behind their backs. I got so sick of telling him to cut it out. My husband and I happened to work at the same place (different departments) and my supervisor would make comments about threesomes (with him, ewww), what hotel we picked for our afternoon delight, stuff like that.
It was so bloody uncomfortable. Apart from this, he spent most of his supervising time outside in the smoke pit. The problem was that the supervisor was "one of the guys" and I was the only girl. Turns out his boss was disgusted, told his boss who lost his mind. They started an investigation which took three days. They interviewed staff—they corroborated what I said.
They checked the security cameras and saw he was spending most of his work day outside in the smoke pit. And was fired. When he was told he guessed (wasn't hard!) that I was the person who complained and tried to get to me to "apologize that I took it the wrong way.” The best feeling was my coworkers surrounding me as he was walked out. That was a lovely ending to it all.
95. The Ultimate Strike-Out
Our general manager just quit yesterday before getting fired. We had a bowling party on Sunday, and he came as messed-up as could be. I feel bad because he is going through a divorce, but he hit on so many of the female employees there. One was 19, and he offered to buy her a car if she went home with him.
96. A Cry For Help
I worked for a big home improvement store that I won't name, all I can say is the stores are orange. We had a guy come into work, very in his cups, and run one of the forklifts into the outdoor storage racks with customers around. Another employee forcibly removed him from the lift and dragged him to the back. But then something surprising happened.
Dude was given two options: Walk and potentially face charges, or go to an inpatient treatment center on the company's dime, and his job would be there if he wanted it after he got out. I can honestly say it's the one actually good thing I ever saw the company do at a corporate level.
97. Exit, Pursued by a Boss
I left my last company due to a horrible general manager. Many people were leaving over him causing problems, being insanely offensive, and doing things people could easily sue them for, claiming harassment. The list goes on. Everyone informed HR during their exit interviews. Heck, he even tried to make my exit interview not happen. Though they still weren't doing anything.
I had been at my new job for a couple of months now and was STILL getting complaints from my old team almost daily. So, I made an email account. Sent an email to EVERYONE who had an email account within the company explaining what he did/still did with events spanning from his start to the day prior. They fired him within the week and my old crew thanked me.
98. My Boss is a Heartbreaker
I had a doctor that constantly ignored patients in serious pain. He thought all of them were faking it to get pain killers. After a senior director at Microsoft passed from a heart attack in our ER that he refused to do an EKG on, I went to management and told them what I had seen.
99. Expensive Tastes
First week, a customer called over my co-worker to the unstaffed truffle counter. He hasn't been trained in truffles, so he just grabs one from the display case and sells it to the customer. This turned out to be a massive mistake. See, what he didn’t know was that the display "truffles" aren’t actually real truffles; they are made of plastic.
By the time he realized, the customer had already left and paid $90 for it. Fired.
100. I Guess It's Just Me and You
I was promoted to VP of my company. The company was in trouble, and the CEO had asked me to figure out why and fix it. I arranged for a random drug test. All employees, the CEO, me, everyone. All on the same day and everyone went down at the same time. Even said I would ignore weed but anyone with anything stronger would be gone.
We get the results back and I fired everyone who had tested positive for any drug other than weed. The CEO and myself were the only two people left working for the company.
