Watching somebody get fired on the spot is one of those rare experiences that is beautiful in its own way, and always defies expectations. It's like seeing a bear in the woods, and no less dangerous depending on the circumstances. Sometimes people fly off the handle and sometimes people just don’t understand, but it's always an astonishing sight to see. The ineptitude and stupidity of some people’s actions can be truly impressive, and of course detrimental to a business, but for our sake, at least it's entertaining.
For those out there who have never had the distinct pleasure of seeing the drama of someone being fired on the spot, this article is something to behold. And it's all thanks to the people of Reddit, who shared their stories on the website for the world to marvel at. So, from the hilarious to the sickening, here are some of the most interesting stories of workers getting fired on the spot.
42. Wrong Place For A Fire Extinguisher Fight
Years ago, I worked for a government contractor at a torpedo manufacturing plant. The electronics were put together in a cleanroom—a pressurized space designed to keep dust out—and employees had to wear special suits and masks to avoid contaminating the products.
Two guys in their 20s worked in there, and one day they decided, for reasons only they could explain, that it would be fun to have a fire extinguisher fight. They sprayed extinguisher powder all over the cleanroom, including the torpedo electronics and a million-dollar pick-and-place robot.
Management was not happy.
41. Not Very Slick
My first job was at a grocery store. I don’t remember a lot from it, but I do remember one day when the store got insanely busy, and they had to pull people like me from other departments to help run the checkouts. They put me on bagging, and the guy scanning items was someone I’d worked with over in produce.
Now, when this guy gave change, he’d “accidentally” pull out an extra five, pretend to put it back in the register while he counted out the change, and then slip it into his pocket once the customer turned away. I noticed pretty quickly because he was doing it with basically every customer. Even when someone wasn’t getting change, he’d still pull one out and act like he forgot they paid with a card.
After I caught on, I watched him do it a couple more times and thought, “Wow. I wonder how long he can keep getting away with that.” Not even two seconds later, I turned and saw the manager on duty that night walking straight toward our lane with a police officer. He got fired on the spot and arrested.
40. Going Out Like A Shark
I worked at the Tempe Improv for two years. We had pre-shift meetings about 30 minutes before each show. One day during Shark Week, my buddy showed up 20 minutes late (on one of the few days the owner was actually there), pretty drunk, wearing a full-on shark costume, carrying his keytar.
He went straight on stage and did a shark rap while playing the keytar, then walked off and sat down next to the owner like nothing had happened. It was so legendary—even for a comedy club.
39. Promising To Do Better
I worked at a restaurant where we had an all-staff meeting, including the higher-ups. It was a pretty normal meeting—people were talking about changes they’d like to see and things they’d appreciate. At one point, the head manager asked if anyone else had something to share.
One of the dishwashers raised his hand and said, “I know I haven’t always been the best, but I’m going to work on that. From now on, I won’t get high in the stairwell by the dumpster. I’ll walk down the street on my break. You won’t even smell it on me anymore, I promise.”
The room went completely silent.
Then the manager said, “Did everyone else just hear that?”
We all nodded.
“Great,” the manager said. “Now I have to be the bad guy and fire you. What were you thinking?”
The dishwasher looked shocked. “But I said I was fixing it. You guys won’t even know anymore!”
He was walked out and let go in front of the whole staff.
38. Pulling His Way Out
A male coworker had his pants yanked down in the office during business hours while he was talking with two female colleagues. Unfortunately, he wasn’t wearing underwear. The person who did it was escorted out within the hour.
We were all in our 30s, and this happened at a publicly traded multinational.
37. Intercom Mistakes
An employee got drunk, called a friend to vent about her boss, and didn’t realize she was on the intercom instead of a private phone call.
That boss was me. I let her go on the spot. Terrible day.
36. Just Sickening
I used to work at a children’s hospital, and one morning I came in and found the security guard—one of my work buddies—waiting for me at my desk. I worked really early, usually starting around 5 or 6 a.m. He looked pretty shaken, and it took a bit of coaxing before he told me what was going on.
He said that an older guy who worked overnight at the switchboard—someone I’d always thought was really nice, since our shifts sometimes overlapped and we’d chat for an hour or two—had been caught by the security guard looking up very inappropriate material on a work computer.
And this was at a children’s hospital. It wouldn’t be acceptable anywhere, but it was especially upsetting knowing he had access to patient areas and was around kids all the time, including some who didn’t have the same cognitive abilities as other children and can be more vulnerable to being targeted. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the content also had a strong BDSM element.
I ended up covering the switchboard that morning while HR called him in. I never saw the older guy again, and my security guard buddy had to talk to several people—along with IT—to confirm exactly what he’d seen.
35. More Than Just Drinking On The Job
I once had to let an employee go immediately after he came back from lunch 30 minutes late and clearly intoxicated. I also suspected he might have been under the influence of something else, but the strong smell of alcohol made it obvious. He was up on a ladder trying to install a shelf when another employee flagged it for me. When I went over to address him for returning late and coming back to work drunk, he ended up dropping the very heavy shelf on my head.
So that was it. You’re fired—please leave.
34. Trash Delivery
I was managing a pizza place in college and had to fire one of our delivery drivers on the spot. A woman came in carrying a grocery bag full of trash, including a bunch of our receipts. She said the driver had dumped it from his car onto her lawn. I comped her a few items and told her I’d handle it.
When the guy got back from his deliveries, I pulled him aside and asked if it was true. The conversation went something like this:
Me: “Hey man, a woman came in with a bag of trash and said you dumped it on her lawn. Is that true?”
Him: “Yeah…”
Me: “Was she rude? Did she not tip you or something? What happened?”
Him: “No, my car was just messy.”
Me: “...So you just emptied your trash into her yard?”
Him: *shrugs* “Yeah.”
Me: “Dude, what in the world? I can’t understand why you’d think that was okay—even if she didn’t tip. The fact you did it just because your car was messy is even worse. I can’t have an employee with that kind of judgment. Hand me your cash so I can count you out. You’re fired.”
Absolutely unreal.
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33. Cell Phone Games
I was working as a temporary IT staffer at a nursing college, and the student loan department was on the ground floor. During lunch, my coworker found an iPhone in one of the student bathrooms upstairs and, instead of turning it in, she put it in her desk drawer. A few hours later, the owner came to our office (for some reason, the Lost and Found was handled through IT), reported it missing, and said she’d accidentally left it in the women’s room after calling her boyfriend. My boss tracked it down by calling the number—there was a very distinctive ringtone.
The department head walked into my coworker’s office, opened the drawer, confirmed it was the missing phone, and fired her on the spot—right in the middle of a conference with a student. I heard him say, “If you can’t do the right thing in a simple situation like this, how can I trust you to do your job ethically?”
Just to be clear: she had to walk right past the Lost and Found to get back to her office, so it really seemed like she planned to keep it. And when she was confronted, instead of saying she was going to return it, she went with the old line, “If they wanted it, they wouldn’t have left it there.” There had also been a few small thefts of personal items in the building before that, and they stopped after she left. I think people had been suspicious of her for a while.
32. Caught In The Act
I used to work at Staples. An employee was in the back room and slipped a Galaxy S3 tablet into his pocket. I was just around the corner when the manager quickly told him he was fired and that he was calling the police. The employee said he was going to leave before the police arrived. The manager reminded him that he had his address and other information from when he was hired. After that, the employee started crying.
31. The Worst Clerk
I was working at an Amazon warehouse when a clerk walked up to me and asked, “Is Melissa disabled?” Melissa was our coworker who seemed to learn a bit more slowly, and it was obvious he found her annoying. I gave an awkward laugh at the question and went right back to my work. A little while later, I saw the clerk push his cart over to Melissa with a laptop sitting on top. On the screen was a picture of a kid with Down syndrome, and the clerk was saying, “Are you disabled? This is you.” She reported him to our supervisor, and he was fired on the spot.
Transportation Security Administration
30. Finally Giving An Excuse To Be Fired
I was working as a baggage handler (the real job title is Ramp Agent, FYI), and they’d hired a guy that pretty much everyone couldn’t stand. He was lazy, clueless, and irritating.
One of the biggest rules when you’re working around airplanes is that you do not go anywhere near the engines while they’re still running. They can pull you in in an instant, and the results are horrific. They drill this into you during training long before you’re ever close to a plane. Once a plane pulls into the gate, you wait until you’ve gotten confirmation the engine is shut down before you go anywhere near it. If you’re not sure, you stay back.
Well, one day a plane pulls up to the gate, and he walks straight up toward the engine while it’s still running. People are yelling, his safety vest is whipping around, and he’s so spaced out he doesn’t even seem to notice. Someone runs over and yanks him back to a safe distance.
They’d already been putting together reasons to let him go, but that made the decision a whole lot easier. The supervisor walked him into the manager’s office, and he was fired on the spot. Most of us were pretty relieved.
29. Piss Poor Burger
A guy started his first shift at a pizza place where I used to work. He said that when he worked at Hardee’s, if someone came in that he didn’t like, he’d urinate on the grill and then cook their burger. The owner overheard him saying that and fired him on the spot.
28. Getting Hammered On His Second Day There
This happened at my current company about six years ago. A guy started on a Monday, and on Tuesday we had our department holiday party. He ended up getting pretty drunk. During a group photo, for some reason, he got the “brilliant” idea to put his arm around the woman next to him and grab her breast.
When she loudly objected, he said he was just joking and claimed he thought she was someone else.
The thing is, she was the company’s CMO. Even though he kept insisting it was “just a joke,” he was told to leave the party immediately and not to bother coming back to work the next day. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that as an example of truly stupid, drunk behavior.
27. Watered Down Goose
A food runner at a bar I used to go to all the time got fired for taking a huge bottle of Grey Goose. The funny part is, it was just a display bottle—and it was filled with water.
26. Talking His Way Out Of Severance Pay
He wasn’t exactly fired on the spot, but I did see a guy talk himself out of getting severance.
In Canada, if an employer fires you immediately, they generally have to give you notice in advance or pay you a certain amount instead. This guy was already on thin ice for being generally incompetent. The last straw was when he tried to sell his own backyard repair service to a customer for a car issue she didn’t actually have. (She had foam on the oil filler cap; he insisted it was a blown head gasket, but it was really just moisture from a cold day.)
Anyway, the boss goes to let him go and he freaks out. He launches into this rant about how he could run the shop better than the owner and the manager, and demands the manager be fired and he take the job—or else he quits.
So the boss calmly says he accepts his resignation and wishes him all the best.
25. Too Late
This guy was late to work nonstop. This was back when I worked fast food. I’m talking 10 shifts in a row where he’d wander in 10 or 15 minutes late. The manager gave him a ton of chances, kept warning him he couldn’t ignore it much longer, and eventually told him he was on his last chance.
He showed up on time for about a week, then came in late again one day. The manager adjusted the schedule for his shift so he technically wasn’t late, and then laid into him in the break room. He told him that was it—no more chances, and he needed to get it together. The manager had a real soft spot for the kid, because even though he was always late, he worked hard and was fun to have around.
The very next day, he still didn’t show up on time. The manager was furious and kept watching for him through the window. We saw him turn into the parking lot, park in the back, and start strolling in. The manager grabbed the drive-thru headset (he had to walk past the speaker to get inside, and we watched it on the drive-thru camera) and said through the speaker, “Don’t bother—you’re fired.”
The kid just lowered his head and walked back to his car. He didn’t even come back for his last paycheck, from what I heard.
24. Giving Yourself A Raise
I was running a small nonprofit with a staff of five. In my first week or two, the payroll report came from ADP and was left sealed on the office assistant’s desk. I got in early the next morning and opened it, and I found out the office assistant—who was responsible for entering everyone’s hours online each pay period—had given herself a raise.
She arrived a couple minutes later, and I asked her about it. She told me it had been promised to her (which you’d think the board or my predecessor would have mentioned to me, right?). She was also upset that I had opened the payroll paperwork. But as the director, reviewing payroll was part of my job.
It wasn’t a huge raise, but if you increase your own pay without approval, that’s a serious issue, and I let her know we couldn’t keep her in that role. I also had to be firm about having her leave the office.
She went down the block to where our board chair worked and told him I was racist (she was Black, I’m Asian, and the chair was Latino), and she made a loud scene. But he was very clear with her that you can’t give yourself a raise, regardless of what you think you were promised. Later, we looked into it and confirmed she hadn’t been promised anything.
23. Violating The NDA
A friend of mine got fired immediately for posting a small plot detail on Facebook about a movie we were working on. He also commented under the movie’s trailer post that some parts of the plot were pretty silly. Unfortunately, one of his friends knew someone who worked at the studio we were working for. Just like that, he was blacklisted by the company.
22. No Empathy
My buddy got fired because he walked out after his manager wouldn’t let him leave when he found out his dad was being rushed to the hospital for a stroke. The manager followed him out of the store, yelling.
21. Winning In The Long Run
A girl I work with got written up for being on her phone at our break table during her break, just because she was staggering breaks to cover someone else. That meant her break happened in the 15 minutes right after everyone else’s. We work in a union shop, and she filed a harassment grievance—and she won.
20. Covering Up The Dirty Dishes
In high school, I worked at Perkins—first as a dishwasher, then as a cook. One night, I was the only cook on duty, and the dishwasher was about to head out. I told him to finish the dishes that were already waiting, and then he could go.
After he left, I found several hours’ worth of silverware in the trash, with a thin layer of food on top to hide it. I called his house and told him not to come back. I didn’t really have the authority, but he absolutely needed to be let go, and it felt good to say it. Officially, he ended up listed as a no-show, since I couldn’t actually fire him.
The next night, I told the assistant manager what happened and what I did. He called in a replacement, and after that, everything ran a lot smoother.
19. Rolling Their Eyes Out Of A Job
He rolled his eyes and let out a little chuckle during a managers’ meeting while the GM was talking about some issues. The GM looked at him and said, “And that attitude is why you don’t deserve to be a manager here. Please leave.”
The guy stood up and was never heard from again.
Umng
18. Dropping The Ball
I worked at a bowling alley when I was a teenager. One girl was fired right away after she dropped a ball on the foot of a customer who was complaining.
17. Sliding On In
Having dinner at a diner one night. As a woman was leaving the restaurant, the server called her a cheap witch for leaving a small tip. He then followed her out the door, going on about how he hates people who don’t tip well. He didn’t realize her husband was outside. The husband told him to back off. The waiter threw a punch, and the husband beat him up. The manager saw what was happening and called the cops while yelling at the waiter that he was fired. I was looking for a job at the time. When everything calmed down, I asked the manager if he was hiring. He laughed his head off and hired me on the spot.
16. In Plain Sight
The employee took money from a customer’s bag while the customer was watching, and it was also caught on about three different cameras.
Police escorted her out, and our most senior manager on duty went to the police station to terminate her employment on the spot.
15. Looking Unprofessional On The Day Off
This happened to me. On my day off, I biked in to handle some paperwork. My boss’s boss saw me wearing a bike helmet, walked up, and told me I was fired because I looked “unprofessional.” Meanwhile, I was there to get reimbursed for groceries I’d bought out of pocket for a group home—the fridge had been empty for at least four days, and we had no clue what, if anything, staff had been feeding the clients.
The firing didn’t stick, because I kept getting scheduled for shifts afterward. I honestly don’t think she even knew who I was.
I’d also taken photos in case I needed to file an OIG report if management didn’t fix the problem. When I showed the pictures to my residential director, they took immediate corrective action, including training the new staff, and it hasn’t been an issue since.
As for my boss’s boss, I think she may have been having a mental health episode that day. I don’t really like her as a person, but she somehow keeps things running despite questionable funding. Other people respect her, so I chalked it up to a bad day. I see her less than once every two years anyway, so it’s not really an issue for me.
14. Wrongful Termination
The employee who was fired hadn’t done anything to justify being let go, and the manager who fired her was later dismissed.
A young accountant (about 24) scheduled a meeting with her manager. Both of them agree she told him she was having surgery the next day to remove and biopsy a tumor. She wanted to go over where her projects stood and put a coverage plan in place for her medical leave. He wanted her to postpone the surgery until after a certain project was finished.
As she walked to Human Resources to request a medical leave of absence, her manager followed her and shouted that she was being insubordinate. He said he would fire her if she didn’t go back to her desk right away. She calmly explained that this was a medical emergency and the surgery date couldn’t be changed, so he fired her—right in front of the HR director.
He was fired the next day (I didn’t personally see that). She came back to work once she had recovered enough, about a month later as I recall.
13. Getting Back At The Owner
The department manager asked to leave early because of snow flurries. We told her that she—and anyone else who was worried about getting home safely—could head out, but if the roads were open the next day, we expected everyone to come in.
The next day, her entire department called out. Each person had some version of, “I can’t get my car out of the driveway.”
Then day three rolled around. One of her team members admitted that on the day of the flurries, the manager told everyone to meet up in a local parking lot and said they’d better call out the next day or she would make things very difficult for them. She apparently said it was to “teach the owner a lesson.”
After we had another employee confirm what happened, she was fired on the spot.
12. Bitter Over Losing The Promotion
My colleague threatened to wreck the server room if he wasn’t made my equal instead of reporting to me.
He was a year older, and we were extremely competitive over a promotion that I ended up getting. I always thought it was mostly in good fun, though I might feel differently if I hadn’t won.
I don’t believe for a second that he truly meant it, but my boss couldn’t really take that risk and had to treat it as serious. Afterward, they both felt awful about the whole thing.
11. (Not) Friendly Competition
I made the mistake of hiring a friend who was going through a tough time.
I was also dealing with a separation, and I had to be away every couple of weeks to spend time with my kids.
When I came back one day, I learned she’d been leaving hours early all week so she could set up a competing business. When I asked her about it, I didn’t tell her everything I already knew, and she still lied to my face. That was a serious breach of trust, and I let her go immediately.
The next week, I took over her work email and found messages showing she’d reached out to at least two of our clients, suggesting they leave and work with her instead.
But somehow I’m painted as the bad guy. Either she truly doesn’t understand what she did wrong, or she’s choosing to act like she doesn’t.
10. Textbook Example Of How To Get Fired
Worked at Waffle House. A cook showed up for the first time in weeks (and he was clearly under the influence) and wasn’t wearing shoes. The manager went over to tell him he couldn’t cook barefoot because it was a health code violation. The cook got mad, grabbed a pork chop off the grill with his spatula, yelled, “Forget you,” and tossed it at the manager’s face.
9. First Day Paranoia
During a summer job in college, I dropped some stuff into a bin next to a guy in the warehouse. He thought I was throwing it at him and started yelling and moving toward me. I didn’t engage and just went to the next shelf where I needed to put things away, but he kept following me. By then, he was yelling so loudly that the shop boss heard him from the other side of the huge warehouse and came over, approaching from behind him. The boss looked at me and asked what was going on, and I explained. The other guy was still yelling. He was gone in less than 10 minutes. It was his first day.
8. No Kids Or Old People
I was 21 and working as a hostess at a fine dining restaurant. For some reason, even though I knew the seating chart well and always tried to keep things fair, this server seemed to have it out for me.
She came up to the hostess stand and chewed me out, saying that “if I ever seated another kid or older person in her section, she’d make me regret it.” (Seriously?!)
I went to the GM and told him I was ready to quit—it was either her or me.
He fired her on the spot.
She had a full-on meltdown and called me just about every name you can think of.
Goodbye.
7. Taking It To The Next Level
This was in the Army, so it wasn’t so much “fired on the spot” as it was being relieved for cause and immediately removed from the job.
A Lieutenant had already built a reputation for being careless and irresponsible. While overseas, he was put into a cushy office position alongside a very solid, highly responsible NCO, basically hoping he couldn’t do too much damage. But of course, the NCO can’t supervise him after hours.
The LT then goes out and gets drunk (a major no-go while deployed). He steals a Gator (basically an ATV) from the motor pool, and then crashes it into his Battalion Commander’s door.
He was on a plane back to the States within 48 hours.
6. Letting It Slip
I once had an employee brought into the office for drawing on product packaging. The other manager in the room asked, “Do you know why we brought you in here?”
He said, “Because I was stealing.”
Yep—let go on the spot.
5. Winners At The Bar
I let a woman go because she passed out at the register while holding a customer’s credit card—she was drinking more vodka tonics than she was serving. The poor guy was super nice; he just wanted his card back.
I fired a guy for trying to sell fentanyl at the bar. My boss really knew how to hire them, and I just had to weed out the useless ones.
I fired another guy the same night I promoted him. He was a barback, a really hard worker, and seemed nice. The second I made him a bartender, he started acting really full of himself and talking down to the barbacks.
There were a few others, but they weren’t so immediate.
Pinterest
4. I Guess It's Just Me and You
I was promoted to VP at my company. Things weren’t going well, and the CEO asked me to figure out what was causing the problems and how to fix them.
I set up a surprise drug test for everyone—every employee, the CEO, and me. It all happened on the same day, and everyone tested at the same time. I also made it clear that I’d overlook marijuana, but anyone who tested positive for anything stronger would be let go.
When the results came back, I terminated everyone who tested positive for drugs other than marijuana.
In the end, the CEO and I were the only two people left working at the company.
3. Not Counting The Candles On The Cake
I was a server at an Italian restaurant. One of my coworkers tried flirting with a guest who was celebrating her 14th birthday with her whole family. His friends kept telling him not to do it, but he still asked for her number, and her mom heard the entire thing. The mother immediately told our GM, who confronted him and fired him on the spot.
About a year later, he tried to ask for his job back.
Just to clarify, you had to be at least 18 to serve there, and if I remember right, he was around 20 or 21 when he pulled this.
2. Don't Bite The Hand That Feeds
Wow, she was really something. She barely ever worked, and she called out two weekends in a row with excuses like a “broken leg” or her car not starting. She’d also lie to try to get other employees in trouble for mistakes she made. Then she’d brag to the owner’s son (who worked there too) about how much work she managed to get out of. Somehow, we still couldn’t get the GM to let her go—he clearly had a soft spot for her.
Eventually, someone showed the GM a public Facebook post where she completely trashed him—the one person at work who didn’t openly dislike her. In the post, she also lied about how much she worked and claimed the whole store was incompetent except for her. He wrote her up for inappropriate behavior, unexcused call-outs, and the rest. She refused to sign it, insisted she was right and that he was useless, and he fired her on the spot.
It felt like a huge weight lifted off everyone. Almost the entire staff had been looking for new jobs. She brought a constant toxic vibe wherever she went.
1. Taking Order
I worked in a doctor’s office, and we had someone filling in while a coworker was out on maternity leave. The fill-in we got had already been moved from office to office because she couldn’t do anything right. She couldn’t bring a patient back in under 20 minutes, she couldn’t handle filing, and overall it was a mess.
When she arrived at our office, we put her on the phones. She answered the phone by saying, “This is Dr. X’s office—can I take your order?” My manager completely lost it and told her to leave and never come back.
The worst part was that she called the boss and asked for a new assignment. He had to tell her three times that she was fired and there wasn’t any new assignment. She genuinely didn’t seem to understand what “you’re fired” meant.
