Managing or owning a business means dealing with people. Sometimes, when it comes to dealing with employees, it can leave you feeling like you’re hitting your head against a concrete wall. Here, Redditors share their stories of employees who didn’t just cross the line…they launched themselves right off the cliff! Is good help hard to find? You bet—and these stories are proof.
1. Stealing His Own Money
My dad and I ran a business together cleaning out foreclosed homes for a real estate agency as I was finishing high school. I was a senior, so I got out at lunchtime, and we could usually get a house done in a half-day. Sometimes we’d get some bad ones, and we had a few guys that we would call to see if they wanted to make a quick hundred bucks for a day’s work.
On my literal last day of class, my Dad picked up one of our usual guys and got one house about 90% done by lunch. He was a pretty regular guy, and we had never had any trouble with him before. Well, the guy went out to the truck for something, came back into that house, and robbed my dad of his wallet. He also took his keys and left with our vehicle.
The funny thing is, my Dad only had the cash he was about to give him an hour later for finishing up the house. The state Sheriff got the guy’s number from us, and they came up with an ingenious plan. They told him some bogus story about how my dad was being investigated for not paying his workers, and if he met them with the truck, they would get his statement and let him go. Idiot pulls up and gets detained on the spot. He got eight years in prison.
2. Undercutting To Unemployment
I had a subcontractor on a job to convince the client that they should dump me and go with their business and undercut me by 10%. I learned this from the client, who asked me to find another person to service our contract.
3. Don’t Quote Me On This
My parents got a quote on some plumbing work they needed once from a chain company, and they quoted some enormous fee in the high thousands. Then, individually while one is talking to my mother and the other guy is talking to my father on a different area of the property, they each mention they run their own side-business and could do the work for way less.
I still wonder if they knew they were trying to undercut each other as well as trying to undercut their employer. My parents went with someone else.
4. Just Put It On My Card
An employee had a corporate credit card. She charged a vacation, purse, Fossil watch, and take-out meals on it. This was along with the fact that she was overall miserable to work with. She “lost” her company laptop within weeks of joining. So we fired her, and a few days later, a watch catalogue from Fossil showed up at the office with her name on it.
We now have active court cases for all the theft.
5. Gotcha!
We had a young IT intern helping with some hardware inventory tasks. It wasn’t uncommon for laptops not to make it back to us as projects would hoard them from terminated employees, but we noticed his backpack open and a computer of a model we used sticking out one day. I sent him to the other side of the building and checked the serial number, and yep—it was one he reported as missing during a recent inventory.
Opportunistic theft is one thing, but bringing it back into the office every day... just...wow.
6. No Stalling
I asked an employee to check the public bathrooms to make sure they were clean and stocked. When he asked about the women's restroom, I said just to knock and make sure nobody was inside. Well, he chose to do it his own way. He banged on the door and screamed, in an intense voice, “Who is in there? Everybody get out!” He then entered the bathroom where a poor little elderly woman was inside the stall, and he continued to bang on the booth, yelling, “Get out!”
He was screaming so loud I heard him and went to investigate. The poor woman was whimpering and terrified. He just was the kind of person who had no idea how he came across. There were many weird issues, but this topped the cake, and I told him he was done and needed to go home. The poor older woman was so upset that she refused to leave the bathroom, and I had to call her son for her.
7. Beware Of Receptionist
My best story was from back in the day when I worked at a veterinary clinic. A woman got fired for hating cats and dogs. She said as a receptionist, and she thought she would only have to talk to people. She didn’t even like people. Thank goodness that manager switched into a different role because that wasn’t even her worst hire.
8. What A Weiner
I don’t own a business, but I work on employee claims and lawsuits. A guy filed a discrimination complaint against the company after getting fired for taking hot dogs from the refrigerator. This warehouse kept a stock of hot dogs for employee appreciation picnics. No one knew why they were disappearing, so announcements were made, and all employees were asked not to eat the hot dogs, and if they wanted some, they could ask but couldn’t have several packs.
That didn’t work, so warnings were announced. Finally, a camera was installed near the refrigerator, and the guy got caught red-handed. He was just practically inhaling the hot dogs directly from the fridge by the packs. After he was fired, he filed a discrimination claim based on disability due to his weight. I sent the response with a video of him eating the hot dogs.
He couldn’t prove his weight was a disability and weight is not a protected class. We won that claim.
9. Bad Mouthing The Boss
My dad owned his own business working as a color corrector/editor. He had this one employee who had been there since day one and became an assistant manager. My dad owned that company for more than ten years and, just recently, he had to fire the assistant manager. The assistant told employees and customers that my dad hates gays, people who aren’t white, his kids, his whole family, that he’s a terrible person.
He was driving all business away, pushing my dad’s company towards bankruptcy. It turns out he was a narcissistic sociopath. My dad is just sad his employees never trusted him enough to tell him about what this guy would say to them.
10. That Hurts
We had a guy on a location fake an injury. Now mind you, he did injure himself severely accidentally, but that wasn't his plan. His plan had been to fake a minor injury and get placed on workers comp. The problem was he screwed up how to do it and ended up hurting himself severely. You ask how did I know he was trying to fake-injure himself? Well, that's very easy to explain.
We had a 20-minute tape of him hiding behind one of the trucks on the worksite practicing his fall. Then a written confession from friends saying that he'd been planning it since the day we hired him.
11. Liquid Lunch
Tool and die shop owner here. One of our machinists would go out for lunch and slam back three or four drinks every day. When I found out, I told him he couldn’t drink at lunch. He said it was his time and what he did at lunch was his business, not mine. The next day, he returned from lunch smelling like a brewery, so I let him go on the spot.
A few years later, he showed up in my office asking for his old job back. He said that he was an alcoholic back then and was sorry for his behavior. He was now sober and needed a job. I hired him on the spot, and it worked out great for five or six years. Then he started drinking again, and I had to let him go a second time. I have no idea how he is doing now, but I often wonder. He was a great machinist and a nice guy when he was clean.
12. Rain Delay
I fired a guy because he said he couldn't come to work because it was raining and he had just washed his car the day before.
13. Food For Thought
I'm an operating room scrub nurse. Work provides us labels to label our food. We have vending machines, too, for snacks and juices and a water fountain. There is also a hot water urn, and free coffee and tea and milk. A canteen lady comes with hot foods and sandwiches etc. at lunchtime during the day. Or there are microwaves and fridges and freezers to keep food employees bring from home.
When I do night shifts, I do an entire week of them. Monday - Sunday. You eat, sleep, nightshift, repeat for seven nights. Yet even marking my food with my name and "Nightshift" beside it, it still gets taken! That's folk knowing I'm there for 12 hours with no canteen lady coming. I was not allowed out of the dept at all during the shift.
Still, they don't care that they're potentially leaving a colleague without food for their 12-hour shift. Not eating leads to fainting potential in operating rooms. It's no wonder many of us have stashes of random long-lasting foods in our lockers. Tinned soup and granola bars for the times we've had our food taken. When I started here and saw this happen here, in operating rooms, it kind of boggled the brain.
This sure isn’t high school, but sometimes it feels like it.
14. Special Delivery
We had an employee who had been fired, it was one of those contentious firings, and he was physically removed from the building. After he was fired, he used the company FedEx to deliver his eBay sales. The company brought charges against him. There weren't one or two sales here and there. He had a whole, huge operation and was shipping out more than 20 shipments a week.
I guess he thought it was too big a corporation for anyone to be reviewing the FedEx bills, which was true until one of the prominent executives hired a family member, and we had to find something for him to do!
15. Flying Fists
I worked for a boutique hotel as an operations manager. Unless the area manager had to come in, I was the law. I get a frantic call on my downtime from an employee claiming our overnight guy tried to assault him. I have a sigh, as the guy freaking out is notorious for being a drama queen. I load up the security camera on my home PC, go to the time frame, and I was shocked by what I saw.
Our night guy legitimately lunged at his coworker. Luckily, a desk was between them, and that gave the victim time to bolt. I instantly felt like a jerk for doubting him. Well, this is when I call in the area manager. We show up at the crack of dawn and speak with the dude who made the attack, and he claims he didn't do it. We show him the video, and he responds with: “I don't recall the events of that evening.”
We fired him on the spot. Later, when I learned the reason for the fight, my jaw dropped. Well, the victim had done extra work to make the attackers shift easier. The attacker felt like this was an insult to his work ethic. Oh, and I got multiple reference requests from similar hotels asking for a reference for the guy I fired. I simply said I couldn’t provide a positive reference, as that was all I could legally say.
16. Driving Me Mad
We had a driver that refused to drive at night, claiming it wasn't safe. She was on the third shift. Her role was a driver. This was all that was expected of her. Do the three to seven trips a month that happen between 9 PM and 5 AM This was after her pleading with us to be put on the third shift. Our director at the time was shady and incompetent, so this went on for six months longer than it should have.
17. Bridge Over Troubled Waters
One of our truck drivers called our office and said he couldn't complete his route. He couldn't bring himself to drive over a long, suspended bridge because he thought it was going to collapse as soon as he got on it. I drove two and a half hours to pick him up and found him blocking almost all traffic going over the bridge with a line more than one-mile long backed up behind him.
He screamed in absolute terror when I told him we were going over the bridge, as there was nowhere to turn around anyway, and that we were completing his run. That was a fun five hours of him crying—mostly because he knew he was fired at this point—mixed with long periods of uncomfortable silence.
18. Touchy Subject
One woman was fired on her second day of a call center training course for a truly disturbing reason. She wouldn't stop touching herself. I am not sure how she got through HR screening. This was for a wireless phone company, too, not a chat line or anything. It was somewhat sad. She was in her late 30s, early 40s and I don't think this was an employment scam or anything of the like and more likely just a mental compulsion or substance misuse.
It was not that subtle but done under a shawl draped over her lap. She was politely and quietly asked to stop by the trainer, then stopped momentarily but started up again 15-20 minutes later.
19. A Family Affair
My wife's cousin worked with her father and me at our landscaping company for a couple of months. He had previous experience, and we needed the help, so we hired him, despite warnings to the owner from my father-in-law. To name a couple of things: We were putting fresh mulch in one of the industrial parks that we maintained, and he had me close the doors to the bed of the truck, after which he raised the bed so all the mulch would slide to the back.
Except the doors weren't designed for that type of load and immediately sprang open. If they hadn't hit the ground while swinging open, they would have badly damaged the cars on either side of us. He then proceeded to call the owner of the company and tell him what happened, placing all the blame on me for "not closing the doors right."
Then, I took him on a paver job, and he insisted that he could cut paving stones with our wet saw. Except he didn't use gloves, so the material from the pavers being cut (which includes some nasty stuff) destroyed the skin on his hands, and he called out for the next two days because he couldn't move his fingers. This was not the first time that he had made this mistake.
But oh, it didn’t end there. On the same paver job, he decided it would be a good idea to mix the mortar and the sand for the base on the owner's freshly paved driveway and use it as he needed it. Except it rained the day he did so, and he ended up with a 3/4 ton block of what was essentially concrete in the middle of their freshly paved driveway.
On multiple occasions, we got reports from the grass cutting crew that he went out with them and that he did nothing all day except sit in the truck, text his wife, and smoke. He thought he could get away with this because neither myself nor my father-in-law was with him. Eventually, he was fired, and we got a couple of extremely nasty but entertaining phone calls from his wife, calling all of us some choice names while vowing that we were no longer part of his family.
20. Burning Bridges
Our pawn shop employee took $400 from the cash register, then realized that there were video cameras. He had no idea where the security footage was stored, so to cover his tracks he set the store on fire. He ended up getting pretty badly burned in the process and spent time incarcerated right after he was released from the hospital.
21. Bad News
An employee quit recently because she “could not handle Notre Dame’s burning.” That’s the church in Paris. She said she felt like she needed to be with her mom during this time. We live in Mississippi. She has never been to Notre Dame.
22. Weeding Out The Losers
I own a small construction company, and there is one guy in particular that sticks out the most. I am very laid back when it comes to how people medicate themselves or choose to unwind. I’d much rather have someone use something natural for back pain or something while they are at home than take an opiate. If you want to drink, go ahead.
My only two rules are not to use anything before work or during, and nothing hard. It’s pretty simple, and it’s not hard to follow. Everyone has an understanding. I explain this to all my new hires, and everyone appreciates it because every construction company in my state will fire someone for using any substance at all.
Now, something I offer my guys is, if they want, I set them up to take courses at a community college to get a better education in our trade. It's a great win for everyone. I get smart guys who know the trade and are more efficient, and it’s a tax write-off. If they pass, I pay them more, and they can always take this education somewhere else if they want to.
I only take a tiny portion of their pay (about a dollar an hour) and foot the rest of the bill. I like doing this with “second chancers,'' I call them, guys getting out of the clink who are looking for a job. I believe everyone deserves a second chance, hence the name. My No. 1 guy was incarcerated for ten years, and you wouldn’t even know it unless he told you. The schooling and the stable job turned his life around—his words.
Now with all that out of the way, let’s talk about the kid I had to fire. We just needed a helper, someone to get tools and materials for the guys working and clean up, you know the basics. It’s a straightforward job, and every apprentice starts out doing it. I offer him $20 an hour to do this job, which is very good for where I live.
He’s a young guy with a new family, so I figure I’d throw him a bone, but he’d have to show he wants more by taking the classes. I made it very clear if he wanted more, he could have it. He just had to follow my two straightforward rules I mentioned earlier. I’m giving this high-school dropout a free education, an effortless and well-paying job, and the opportunity of a great career. How does he thank me?
By not going to the classes, leaving early frequently, and showing up late and high. Anyone who thinks it isn’t apparent when they do that is just sadly mistaken. It’s super obvious. And you smell like it too. If I can smell it, my customers can smell it. I gave him the warning to clean up his act because he won't find another job like this because of his lack of education and background.
The very next day shows up 20 minutes late to the job site with bloodshot eyes and smelling of weed mixed with cologne. I just told him to get back in his truck, and I’ll send him his check. I’m a super understanding guy, but even I have my limits.
23. Shallow Talent Pool
I had to fire my brother. He would tell me he cleaned a bunch of pools, and then a week later, I have a dozen messages from clients about how the pools were dirty and were turning green. The jerk would sit in the truck and play on his phone and drive circles around the area.
24. Caught Off Guard
I used to manage a store in the shopping mall. I'm pretty sure that one of my employees was cheating on her husband with a mall security guard. I would come by on my days off, and he'd scurry out in a fluster. I never mentioned it, but the guy was coming by all the time to the point that it kept her from doing her job, so I finally had to do something.
Finally, we had a work meeting, and I said in a very non-accusatory way, something like this: I know it gets slow here during the week, and I'm guilty of it myself, but from now on, I need everyone to keep personal visits to a minimum or during your lunch break. Her reaction was unbelievable. She stands up and starts screaming at me. How dare I accuse her. She quits. She continued to call me and leave me harassing voice-mails for a while too.
25. It’s A Gas
My dad used to predominately hire people with rap sheets. All they had to do was inspect rental cars for damage as the cars left the lot and just generally keep their noses clean. You could do pretty much anything you wanted on your downtime with no complaints from my dad as long as he didn't get any complaints from the car lot owners.
One day one of the supervisors for the car lot I worked for walks out and asked me for my dad's number. The supervisor had caught a guy taking gas from the property, and he even had security camera footage of it happening. The dude was instantly fired.
26. A Big Mouth
My wife and I started a small software company 20 years ago. She's the manager and does sales and HR. I do the programming. Anyway, we hired a programmer one time, and the first day on the job, I spent the whole morning with him going over our development philosophy, how we do source control etc., and then showed him an overview of our applications and how we build them. Along the way, he was highly critical, pointing out what he considered flaws in everything.
After lunch, he goes back in to see my wife. He didn't know we were married. We don't share a surname, and we keep pretty much to ourselves. He says to my wife, "you know how to fix this company? You need to fire that other guy." We still laugh about that one.
27. If You Have Nothing Nice To Say…
One of our crews was on the job, and the client was very angry over something they'd done wrong. Ten minutes later, a guy turns up, and as he is wearing a work vest, they assume he is also working on the project. So one guy on the crew who was as dumb as a bag of rocks goes up to the newcomer and starts talking about "this fat woman who needs a good smack" and how dare she complain when she doesn't know anything about construction. Big mistake.
It turns out the newcomer was "that fat woman’s" husband.
28. This One Is Just Weird
I own a small business that I run, and one time this employee quit because he got bit by a squirrel that a customer threw at him.
29. “Complete Idiot”
The company I work for is a contractor for a giant corporation, and we go to different stores to do work. This new guy we hired seemed normal at first, but it turned out he was a complete idiot. So one day, he goes on-site with one of the senior employees to shadow him. This genius thought that we could just eat anything off the shelves and from the refrigerators free because we did work for the giant corporation.
The employee saw this and told him that he needed to pay for the food and called the manager. This guy then started fighting with the manager then got in his car after, and drove off. He was fired the next day.
30. Almost Famous
We hired a new heavy mechanic. He claimed to have prior experience. We hired him because he had a kid on the way and was in a bad spot financially, and the owners had a soft spot for unlucky people. Within a week, his nickname was Al-Most. He almost did the work correctly. He almost rewired an electrical system. He almost rebuilt an air dryer successfully. He almost mounted tires.
The probability of the part he rebuilt failing within a week was a solid 60%. By the end of week two, it was clear most of his knowledge was book-learned and not the real world. They wouldn't let him do anything except change oil. Once his probation period was up, he showed no improvement or drive, so they let him go. Trucks only make money when they move, and he couldn't keep them moving.
31. Allergic To Work
I owned a pet store, and a young man came in looking for work. He seemed quite personable and had been a bit of a regular customer (with his mom), so we gave him a chance. It turns out he's anaphylactic allergic to fish. And not just eating them, but touching them. We sell live fish, fish food (which is made out of fish), cat and dog food with fish, etc.
He said it was no problem because he had an epi-pen. Um no. You wouldn't look for a job at a peanut factory if you were allergic to nuts! I can't believe his mom even allowed it.
32. Cat Got Your Tongue?
A woman called in “sick” to work. Her excuse? Her pet cat wouldn't let her leave the house. She was dropped instantly.
33. Egomaniac Explosion
We had a guy who we hired who showed a lot of potential in sales. He was a little arrogant and had a good-sized ego, but it wasn't enough of a problem. He was very good at sales, and eventually, it went to his head. He started showing up late all the time, leaving early, cutting corners where he could. The final straw came one day when he showed up late.
I spoke to him about it. He decided the best choice of words he could yell were, "I make the most sales, so you all can screw off!” I fired him on the spot. Customers thought it was pretty funny, though.
34. Theory Is Half-Baked
I used to own a bakery, and a woman quit because she blamed her yeast infection on a bad batch of yeast I bought from China. I may be a guy, but I don't think that's how it works.
35. Body-slam
It was a manager of mine. He always asked for a ton of time off, and I still gave it to him. He put in a time request form for two days that I blocked because I had something to do that weekend. I told him I’m sorry, but I can’t give you those two days. It was to go to a wrestling show, which was what he usually asked days off for. Not a funeral, wedding, etc.
It was a Friday, and I walked in to work, and he had written a note saying he wasn’t going to be coming into work that weekend and wished to continue working for me. I decided to cancel my weekend plans, and I fired the guy.
36. No Joke
Someone at my old job taped a battery and many wires to a calculator to make a fake explosive device. She then planted it at someone else's work station. The other person reported it to management, who then called the authorities. When it came out who had made the “device,” she was fired.
37. Regretting This Hire
I was just having a conversation with my grandad about when he used to own a business. He told me the only employee he regrets hiring was an Army NCO’s son during the Vietnam years. This guy was a great candidate and seemed enthused to be applying for his first job. He was 18 at the time. My grandad offered him a job starting the next day but warned him if he drove, he’d have to move his car every two hours to avoid the street parking fine.
Anyway, he showed up to work the next day and set about learning the ropes. After two hours, my grandad tells him to move the car, so he doesn’t get in trouble. This kid goes to move his car and never comes back. My grandad was annoyed. Anyway, being the son of an army man himself, grandad tracks down this kid’s father.
He tells the guy what happens and gets the kid’s address. He goes over to find this guy sitting there with his girlfriend and drinking. The only explanation he offered was that he was “bored.” Needless to say, he didn’t have a job and never got paid for those two hours.
38. What Happens In Vegas...
I’m a former retail manager, and we had a female employee who wanted to go to Vegas for the weekend. She didn’t ask with enough notice and couldn't find coverage for her shift, plus it was going to be a busy holiday weekend, so I denied it. She ended up calling in sick but posted all sorts of pictures on social media of her in Vegas. She was surprised when I let her go upon her return.
39. Not In The Cards
I had an incredibly nerdy co-worker who was obsessed with Pokemon, Magic the Gathering, and Yu-Gi-Oh. They were the only things he would ever talk about and would talk about them for as long as you'd let him. One day I'm on the register, I witness something that made my blood run cold. I see him being dragged out of the store in handcuffs. It turns out he had been shoplifting tons of playing cards of those above-listed games.
He had taken at least $500 worth of merchandise, as our store policy was to let an employee "get away with it" up to that amount before busting them, I think because the charges stick harder or something.
40. Day By Day
Here is a day-by-day account of a disaster of an employee: Day 1: His mom calls and says he got carried away with last night’s holiday celebrations and woke up and found himself in the slammer. Day 4: He’s free and shows up to work for the first time. Then, on day 16, he advised me if he ever doesn’t show up for work, call the county lockup.
If he’s there, then there is a roll of 20-dollar bills in his drawer labeled bail fund. Please get him out. A few weeks later, he took some Xanax he had obtained somehow without telling us. I gave him the job to use the tractor’s front end loader and load my dump trailer with debris we're cleaning. While he is working, the Xanax kicks in, and he runs into the same house five times with the tractor.
He finished the job and parked the tractor inside the barn (mostly). Ten days later, at 3 AM, a tenant calls about the maintenance guy (our employee) having Fire and Rescue at his house. He had gotten inebriated while vacuuming behind the couch, and he managed to flip it over on himself. He couldn’t get out from under it but could reach his cell phone and called Fire and Rescue to get him out, and they did.
Honestly, I didn’t believe it could get worse—but it did. Less than two months after we hire him, he dresses up in a KKK outfit and starts walking through town and the park in his outfit with a shovel for a flag pole with a Confederate flag on it as his Halloween costume. Somehow makes it home covered in eggs. Finally, we had to fire him.
41. Bad Explanation
An employee left an open, half-full can of one of those spiked seltzers in his locker. The lockers have transparent doors, and he left his unlocked. His explanation? He found it on the side of the road, and he was planning on recycling it later. What a guy. It's not every day you see someone with that kind of commitment to sustainability.
42. A Late Show
I worked with a girl in retail who just could not arrive on time. Even with a five-minute leniency rule, she still couldn’t get there on time. We had a pretty generous tardy system, eight tardies in six months and then termination after that. We had pretty high turnover, so this girl had more than 10, and no one had said anything to her.
She even admitted she was usually “on time” but would sit in her car and talk on the phone and end up late. Or decide to hit a drive-thru knowing she didn’t have time and end up late. One day she comes in, late as usual, and immediately gets called to the store manager's office. We assumed she was getting fired, but it turned out she was simply getting “warned.” At that moment, she decided to ask the manager if her tardy from that day counted. He fired her on the spot.
43. Not Rocket Science
I was a job site crew chief when this happened. I worked in restoration; for fire losses, we would pack out an entire house or affected area (soot, smoke, and burned items). In this one job, the woman was a hoarder, and one of my techs, who was 37, finds bottle rockets from the late 80s and thinks it was a great idea to shoot them off in the customer’s yard.
Since they are so old, they are duds, but he fires like five or six before I tell him to stop. The next day we had a part-time kid come to work who was like 17. He shot one off, even after I told him not to. So the neighbor tells the homeowner, and the homeowner calls our owner to complain. When he writes up the 37-year-old, he tries to justify himself because the 17-year-old, young, new, and stupid, did it after shooting them off.
So they both ended up getting fired. Don't mess with customers' stuff. It’s not worth it.
44. Epic Fail
I was hiring for a government contract that requires everyone to be substance tested. I told the guy in the interview that he would be tested. Hired. Failed the test. Fired. When I told him he failed the test, he said, "Yeah, I knew I would."
45. Easy Street
I don't own a business, but one of my friends once quit a job I got him at the place I worked because it was "too easy,” even though he wasn't even doing half of the things he was supposed to do, and the few things he was doing he was doing poorly.
46. Tighty-Whities
Just because you work overnights alone doesn't mean you can walk around in your underwear after getting caught and warned once already.
47. Young Entrepreneur
I had a duct tape wallet business in grade four and hired classmates to sell for me. I fired one kid because he took my swing at lunch.
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48. Forgot Your Password?
At my work, one of the operations managers would change the login password to some of the women he found attractive so he would be the one to help them and flirt with them. All the women pretty much turned him down, and then he got nasty with them. A few of them reported him to HR, and that's when they noticed that he was the one changing all the passwords and fired him.
49. Hairy Situation
A teacher sent a text message to a co-worker stating that a black student’s hair looked like one of those little crazy-haired dolls with the gem for a belly button. Word got around to the principal, and the dude was fired immediately. Then his sister, who was the gym teacher, quit in solidarity.
50. The Bare Truth
When I had my translation business, I hired a guy to seek out contracts for me, and I’d pay him a 20% finder's fee. Instead of sending the finished project to a client, he accidentally sent intimate pictures of himself. Of course, I only learned about it later, when my client forwarded me the mail half an hour later, I learned of it, including the (multiple) glorious photos.
51. No Free Lunch
At a previous job, we had issues with food being taken from the break room fridge. The company made a big stink about it, and it kept happening, so they very obviously installed security cameras in the break room. Like big cameras in plain sight, pointing at the fridge. Our bosses were very direct about "There is the camera, you want to lose your job over eating someone’s sandwich?"
52. This Guy’s A Little Slow
Years ago, my husband worked for a small company. He did a little bit of everything, and one of his jobs, along with a co-worker, was keeping all the computers running. Now, this was a sales-based company, so all of the salespeople had laptops for themselves. If there were an issue or problem, they'd bring them in to be looked at.
So one day, one of the non-local sales guys was in for a meeting. He said, "Hey, my computer is running slowly. Can you take a look at it?" My husband says, "Yeah, sure, no problem." The sales guy leaves the computer and goes to whatever meeting he was off to. My husband and his colleague took a look and saw that the disk was nearly full and figured that was slowing things down. That’s when they made a disturbing discovery.
They dig deeper and see the computer is filled with adult-material and like filled with it—all sorts. Now, mind you, the salespeople signed an agreement that their assigned computer was for business use only, not personal use. So, we have a slight problem here. My husband and his colleague, not wanting to make a mountain out of a molehill and not wanting the guy to lose his job over a fixable problem, just wiped the drive clean, reformatted it, got things set up again, and the computer was working great.
The guy comes back the next day, and my husband explains things to him very diplomatically, "Hey, we took a look at your computer. It was running slowly because the disk was nearly full with personal files, so we wiped it clean, reformatted things, and you're good to go. You know, just a reminder that company-issued computers are for business use only. If you're looking for something for personal use, here are some relatively inexpensive laptops with a lot of storage space.”
“You can put whatever you want on it. A small investment for privacy, you know." And with that, they gave him a printout list of some good, reasonably-priced laptops he could purchase for himself. Excellent approach, yes? The sales guy just kind of mumbled something, grabbed his computer, and was on his way without so much as a thank you. Well, the guys figured that was that, but guess who was back six weeks later with the same problem. Yep, idiot. Problem? Yes, the computer was again filled with the same stuff.
They were done at this point. The two of them went straight to the President's office, showed her what was on the computer (well enough to give her an idea) and explained what had happened previously. She was a very no-nonsense lady, so needless to say, by 3 PM that afternoon, that sales guy was no longer employed. What an idiot.
53. Writing On The Wall
I am an operating room nurse. We had a patient who was getting a mass removed from her underarm and bosom area. This other genius male nurse takes a medical marker and writes, "Solid. Call me." with his cell phone number on her chest while she was under anesthesia.
54. Office Offence
I used to do some consulting work and hired a woman to help out: mostly clerical stuff and whatnot. I flew down to St Thomas for a meeting and got a call from my office alarm company at 10:30 PM. She had keys to my building but didn't know about the alarm. She and her boyfriend brought another couple down to have a foursome in one of my offices I had converted to a bedroom where I could crash if I worked late. So, I came up with a plan.
I called her. She answered mid-coitus and acted normal, albeit a little tipsy. I talked about a few mundane details I needed to relay to her anyways. I then mentioned how she only was ever at the office between 7 AM and 7 PM, and casually brought up how there was a silent alarm that would call me with audio of activities in the building.
When I got back in town, her keys were sitting on my desk.
55. Bad Medicine
I worked in a hospital. I worked with an RN for a while who gave me a bad feeling—and when I found out the truth about her, I was utterly horrified. She had been pilfering patients' narcotic medication and hoarding it. The patients were given half of their regular doses and were complaining of extreme pain. This lasted about a month.
To top it off, she took the medication while on the job and was high most of the time. She was terminated, reported to her College and ended up being charged criminally.
Sources: Reddit,
