Working at a call center and we had bonuses for people that could book the most hotel rooms (hotels.com). This one lady suddenly started winning all the bonuses day after day. This went on for almost 2 weeks.
Then the FBI showed up. Turned out she was just stealing people's CC numbers and booking them hotel rooms without them knowing.
Uh... That's gotta be the lowest possible profit way to steal someone's credit card funds. She could have just spent the money on the cards.
I did this briefly years ago for a hotel chain (the booking, not the stealing). We got an extra quarter for everyone we transferred to another department for deals or some shit. We were supposed to ask people if they would like to hear about it but I found out that as long as it transferred they could immediately hang up and I still got my bonus. After that every caller I had got transferred to the other department for the rest of the time I worked there.
I made an extra few hundred bucks and got canned about the same time I found a job in my field. No FBI involved, though.
Let's be honest, corporate was just mad they didn't think of it sooner! :p
It was me, I left a bad review for the pizza place I was working for. Owner was pissed, but to be fair I waited 2 damn hours for my delivery and when it still never showed up I just cancelled the order. I wasn't even getting a deal on it.
WOW. RUDE.
(Them, not you.)
I got fired when the company decided to downsize.
"How is that dumb?" you ask? That happened less than two weeks after I was hired. The boss man's speech indicated that that was the result of a long deliberation by corporate. So if you knew there could be layoffs any moment, why the fuck were you hiring?
This is usually done to keep things going as normal as possible for as long as possible. Once people start noticing something is wrong, the best people start looking elsewhere. Before you know it, not only is the company in financial trouble, but it can't recover because some of the best people left. At least one time I witnessed, the company was working on layoff plans and even limited bankruptcy, but at the same time negotiating with the investment firm that owned part of the company to get more money. If they got the money, everything would be fine. It wasn't till that fell through, they had to start laying people off.
Exactly. Companies are typically working on multiple conflicting scenarios because you don't know which it's going to be
As if the best people won't leave once the layoffs start
Right but you're trying to avoid them leaving before that in case you get a win and don't need to make the lay-offs. If they leave earlier the win you're hoping for may no longer be enough to save you.
Yup, I worked for a company that was laying off but they were still hiring because, "they had a hiring policy." Absolutely nonsensical.
What do you think would happen if the C-suite called HR and told them "we're about to announce a downsizing in 2 months, stop hiring people"?
I worked for a company that did just that and it was the best way to do it because a lot of people left on their own.
The problem is that this way, your best people with the most options leave first.
Those you want to keep long enough to do the re-structuring and make the numbers on the books look good, so you can sell the company before it disintegrates completely.
Aren't those people also the first to be let go? They're the most expensive and you can maximize short term profits by letting go to expensive employees and hiring on cheap ones.
Not always. I think the best people think they WON'T be let go and some others who don't perform, figure they are on the chopping block.
In our case it didn't matter because they wound up having four rounds of layoffs before shutting that location down entirely. So it really wound up being WHEN you were fired, not IF.
Because they're heartless.
This is technically fired, but it's more like quitting. It doesn't perfectly fit this thread but I love telling this story.
A few months into my first real job, the engineers got their raises (not me, I was new). 0%, after record profits, the team busting their ass and working insane hours, and promises of good raises. I think they got some gift cards or something.
One of my coworkers goes back to his desk, packs some stuff, walks to his car, and doesn't come back. He got paid for a full month before they finally fired him. We got a beer after and he was like "oh I don't think I'm gonna go back" in the most Office Space way
Did they not realize he wasn't coming in anymore? How did he continue getting paid for a month?
Our boss was like "I'm sure he's mad but he'll cool off" for way too long lol
We also worked some insane hours across many locations so it wasn't abnormal to not see your office mates for weeks at a time
There was a woman who was a retail store manager who just upped and left for the Congo. (Yes, really)
Corporate didn't fire her for a year. (Yes, really)
A whole team called in sick on the same day, went camping, posted pics to Facebook, shared the pics at work the next week in front of the boss.
They were asking for this, weren't they?
Boss saved money on throwing a team building event…
I worked with a guy who's wife had just had a baby and the baby was sick. The guy was very good at his job but was working from home without really asking permission. We have some leeway in this matter but technically he didn't clear it. His supervisor really had it in for him and was trying very hard to get him fired for falsifying his time card. I don't know why he didn't like him, but the supervisor was a real ass. It may have been racist motivation, but I'm not sure.
I should point out that I had asked this guy to do some work for me that I didn't have the capability to do and this guy approached it in such a unique way that the customer and some universities were really interested in his work. This is a defense contractor environment where every working hour has to be accounted for. Whenever I asked the guy a question whether via email or telephone, he always responded immediately. It was all computer code so I didn't see a problem with this.
When he came into work and told me what was going on I immediately contact the manager on his behalf.
Well bottom line is that management pretty much dropped the subject and the supervisor was walked out of the facility. Turns out he had been falsifying his own time card the whole time. How's that for hypocrisy?
I got fired for reading the newspaper during my lunch break.
Once a week this newspaper came with a for hire section that also included career advice and al that stuff.
I was reading that part but the CEO called me into his office to tell me off. I called his bluff and he fired me.
I was scheduled to lead a team in China for a few weeks and after that had to go to the US for some other job. Sadly people that are fired can't work off premises anymore so the staff manager begged me to accept their withdrawal of my discharge.
I kindly declined and got payed out a years' wage. Took the time to reorientate into less toxic work environment. I now work with politicians, don't know what happened there.
I think the CEO firing you meant that he wasn't bluffing.
He first lade a threat. Then I called his bluff and then he pushed through.
In that way I got my full year off.
The stupid thing was that I was fired for reading a newspaper. I didn't take it up to court because I knew I was getting a full years pay if they fired me that way.
How do you get a full-year's pay after getting fired?
Contractual and lawful reasons.
You can't be fired without proper cause so when they fire you without proper cause the wil have to keep you on board for a while or choose to pay you out for that amount of time.
I was sort of a foreman with a teal of about 20 technicians and I also had to work directly with our customers.
They deemed me a liability because I was fired so they chose to pay out.
Same with salesmen. When you fire them without proper cause they want you out of their network as soon as possible and won't take the risk of letting you work with costumers anymore so they just pay out the amount of time that is needed.
In Canada. If I get canned my severance is 1.5 years salary. (Based on length of emplyment.) It's even better in Europe. It's what happens when a country doesn't flipflop between two right wing parties and actually has a party focused on the working class.
Cries in American
Yeah like, lol
This CEO thought that someone who was going to lead a team in China for his company would look for work through the newspaper?
This is about 20 years ago.
Anyway, the absurdity of the situation still strikes me today. I was reading the newspaper provided by the company and mister manager was angry that I read something he didn't like so he tried to force me into submission.
Worked at IBM. Co-worker was in the datacenter, saw a bluescreened machine, and rebooted it. Much chaos ensued. Machine was part of a stability testing project, team running it was OTW to the DC to look at the machine, and were very confused when they arrived that it was running. "Helpful guy" was chastised, given a warning about touching machines that weren't his responsibility.
Two weeks later. Same guy. Same machine. Same bluescreen. Guess what he did? He rebooted it. Again.
Walked to the door that day.
First time was an honest mistake. Second time... That's all on him.
Exactly. Always wondered what he was thinking the second time, lol!
Harvey’s Hamburgers counted the times I punched in 1-3 minutes past my official start time (despite me being there 20 minutes in advance all times) as being “late” and fired me based off of this.
The two other employees were both pregnant with the manager so I have a suspicion that I got fired because at that time I couldn’t get pregnant. I still can’t get pregnant now because I’m a man, but I also couldn’t get pregnant back then.
I glanced at your username after reading this and thought it said PregoBoi lol
Finally after all these years I learned that u actually can get pregnant as a man as long as you eat so many perogies. It’s a food baby and mines named Samantha.
And if it’s a boy?
Samantha.
Thasaman.
Now that there are no other men around I can impregnate all the women. Oh wait, I already did that.
Homie out here flexing with his extremely motile sperm.
That managers name? Elon Musk.
Dudes name was Clint. Imagine giving birth to a human child and then looking down at the pink noisemaker and thinking “that’s a Clint”.
Posting a selfie of himself holding a burger and a pop next to the "No food, no drinks, no photographs" sign in the secure datacenter?
I love this one
Omg, that's hilarious!
I have a co-worker (in an open, shared office) who
doesn’t react to tickets, Teams messages or emails
refuses to answer the phone even when the call is specifically for him
has only one specific task assigned to him, which he regularly fucks up but doesn’t care
sleeps under his desk for an hour every day during work time
plays music with offensive lyrics loudly, while others are on phone calls with customers
watches porn on his work computer
walks over to co-workers, farts, then walks back to his chair
He’s been with the company for 20 years.
The trick is within the company for 20 years. If you're the guardian of some ancient forgotten but critical knowledge, you become impossible to fire
He's the guardian of some secrets about a very high profile company, involving some of the higher-ups.
And also has an officially recognized disability, in a unionized company. It is big enough for them to hide him away from public view, rather than risk him airing their dirty laundry in the court case that will come if they fire him.
The best move for management in this situation is to "promote" him, into a new role that segregates him from the rest of the team. No office space work in the basement thing, but something that makes him distinctly a different role/title, and physically gives him a small office down the hall.
It doesn't sound like much, but any physical distance will be nice for you and others like you. It also removes depression when you know he's the same role but not held to the same standards. Eventually all that crap takes its toll, and good people quit...or worse, they stop caring and don't quit.
The saying one bad apple can ruin the bunch is very true in work situations.
This guy sounds like a straight shooter with upper management written all over him. Legend.
walks over to co-workers, farts, then walks back to his chair
Lmao
George Costanza meets Peter Griffin.
At a place I worked at previously, there was a guy who got fired because the company found out that he had been hiding cans of beer in the water tank part of the toilet.
Yes...you read that right, he would "take a bathroom break" so he could pound a beer a few times throughout the day lol.
I wouldn't critique it that much honestly, except for the fact that he operated heavy equipment for his job, so yeah, not safe at all.
Restaurant Christmas party, guy walks out of the bathroom drunk af and tripping on shrooms with his dick out. Owner and their kid were right there when he came out. Instantly fired and lucky he’s not a sex offender
Taking hallucinogens at a work function is bold.
„Aaahhh this party is ass lemme go to Mars right quick „
Probably me telling my manager to go fuck herself.
I think it was justified, but barely.
It was a fast food joint, so not exactly a job I was willing to take shit over.
I have long hair, and have since jr high. So did other employees, but only women and girls. A hair was found in food and it had to be mine, despite my hairnet, despite it being the wrong color, and not the same length.
I pointed all this out and she told me I needed to cut mine. I asked if this was a new policy for everyone, she said just me. So I told her to go fuck herself. Now, I'd have just said no politely, and let her fire me for something bullshit and collect unemployment. But back then, I had less self control.
After that, it was probably a dude I worked with at a nursing home. Weird dude, but a generally good partner to work with. Unfortunately, he liked stealing panties from patients. Why? Nobody knew. He said he didn't wear them, and it wasn't a sex thing. And that's all he would say on the subject.
Dude was lifting them after they got back from laundry services, stuffing them in his pocket. He had taken enough that it was noticeable, as in the rest of the staff was having trouble finding them for the patients to wear. You expect some loss of clothing via laundry, or wear and tear, but not just underwear, and not in bulk unless there was some kind of accident in laundry, like a bleach spill.
The laundry staff were questioned about it, and it was pretty obvious it wasn't them since they could have just said items were too damaged or stained, and nobody would have questioned it. They would have had records of tossing them, even if they were stealing them and faking it.
Dude got found out when he fucked up and pulled a pair out with his keys in the break room. You can't mistake a pair of big cotton panties for anything else, and the patient name was inked on.
With that, he was questioned by the head nurse, then the administrator, and gave no satisfactory answer. He did, however, return the pilfered panties when threatened with a call to the police. Not that it would have amounted to anything, but he didn't want the attention.
When I talked to him later on, he still wouldn't say why he did it. We had all kinds of silly theories cooked up, and I suspect that the one that he had some kind of mother or grandmother fixation was true, minus the bit about him being a budding Norman Bates taking them to dress up his mom's body.
Last I heard, he left the state, so I doubt I'll ever run into him to try and ask again.
A lot of damaged people in the world. We are probably all damaged, honestly. But some more than others.
Person here. Can confirm. Am damaged.
The last time I was a team lead, I would sit in on meetings and whenever this one admin assistant was present she would complain about an analyst's appearance saying things like he looked disheveled because his shirt had some wrinkles; but he was very much silicon-valley/california-shabby-chic fashioned for the time.
We got bought out by a bank complete with stereotypical old fashioned management and dinosaur sensibilities from the East Coast. She brought up the analyst again during one of our meetings that included the new management and the analyst was fired the next day.
Eastern and Western US work ideals clash all the time. I’m in CO and we are definitely a we work to play state not we live to work and I haven’t seen an actual suit worn by anyone other than a lawyer around here, even at church. As soon as someone from the east coast shows up it’s painfully obvious. We don’t have much tolerance for their go, go, go ways and usually show them a great time and a relaxed vibe to relax them a bit. They’re always perplexed at how we can perform so well with such a relaxed attitude. Doesn’t usually click that it’s correlated.
Also Colorado. Granted, covid didn't give me much opportunity here but I wore a suit this summer for the first time in about 5 years. It was a wedding and I was the officiant 🙃
Oh I’m sorry, weddings and prom are still very formal, true. But a lot are western wear these days. Good point.
Oh no, I wasn't trying to disprove your point at all! Just showing how extreme the situation needs to be to justify a suit. From what I remember most of the guests didn't wear a suit either, but I can totally see it being a thing on the east coast.
colorado felt like another silicon-valley-ish niche to me so this makes sense, but i'm surprised to hear about the work perspective because the people i worked with in colorado tended to have more socially conservative views than my californian colleagues complete w an early-to-bed-early-to-rise work ethic.
the denver-boulder area, in person, is hard to distinguish from places like austin if not for the climate and geography; the general attitudes of strangers towards me made that place no different than anywhere in texas for me.
Wait... People don't have a work-to-live attitude in CO? I live in NC where everyone works their lives away. Are you telling me I can move, even within the US, and that's not the case? I know NC is terrible for workers, but if it's that much of a discrepancy then I would pack and go elsewhere asap.
First thing I got told when I moved from NoVA to CO as a manager was people work to play. That has proven true time and time again. Snows a lot, everyone calls out and hits the slopes. Gorgeous day and they’ve just recently stocked a favorite fishing spot? Calls out to fish. Hunting season and got one of the lottery elk tags? Puts vacation in or unpaid time off since they’re extremely hard to get and goes off trying to bag and elk ok the western slope. Recently upgraded your Jeep? They’re definitely taking it off road on a mountain trail stat. Yeah, we have a ton of fun out here.
Some office administrative was going to be fired, but due to timezone confusion all her accounts were terminated before HR got to the office.
For half of the morning somebody had to pretend to be checking with IT why her computer didn't work.
Wow, that’s uncomfortable.
There's a linux command, called "touch" which sets the timestamp on a file. It's used for several things, including testing that the user has write privileges and that the filesystem is working.
I heard of a sysadmin who used to use "touch kids", creating or updating the file 'kids'. Some sort of internalised joke, I assume. His boss told him not to because it was inappropriate. Then again formally when he kept on doing it. Dude couldn't stop, like some form of muscle memory. Kept on using kids as a test filename.
So yeah, he got sacked pretty quickly.
I think the German minister of finance has a place in these comments
How is what he did dumb?
He only continued to refuse to increase the spending limit, which is basically the only thing he promised to do if he was elected.
I mean, that position is completely wrong in the current situation, but it's not a change from his position 3 years ago.
Yeah he came in with an agenda (block all legislation that could hurt his luxury car daddies). And he achieved all if that. Now his job is done and he gets to retire early.
He rendered the left-leaning government ineffective, making a shift to the right in the next election more probable, then triggered early elections.
Genius, really.
There was an ice cream party for the company. Those who attended were laid off.
I feel like I need more context. What???
It was a frozen yogurt company. The ice cream was a ruse to smoke out those not committed to the cause.
What the hell? And how didn't it ended in a massive lawsuit?
Assuming not-Montana US, you can be fired for any reason other than membership in a protected class (race, religion, etc). Attending an ice cream social, even a company one, is not a protected class.
I’ve heard of similar things. Boss wants to see who is the least busy, so they do something like open an employee gym. Then anyone who uses it is fired, because “if you have time to use the gym, you’re not working hard enough.”
Exactly. There was also a puzzle table once. The higher boss said he loved to see people building teamwork and closer relationships and liked the puzzle. I luckily knew the whole time that even though he said this he fucking hated the puzzle. I winced everytime he'd catch someone working on it. Some people are just oblivious AF. "He said he likes the puzzle!" Yeah he said that, but he absolutely does not and you're probably on the shit list now
Why??? I'm very confused!!
Used to work at a warehouse driving lift trucks and forklifts.
One guy out of nowhere turns into an aisle and smashes into a stack of 50" tvs. And this was back in the day when those things were like $2k each.
We go check on it and dude reeks of spiced rum. The stinkiest of liquors. He is shit faced. He had a bottle in his locker and kept going back for more. Fired on the spot.
Tbf that warehouse was wild, half the employees were ex cons and everyone was always doing stupid stuff
Someone secretly took a photo of someone else because they didn't like the shirt and sent it to so many people not realizing they all liked the person and immediately told them. He had HR involved within minutes and she was fired. All of that happened in about 20 minutes of the photo being taken. There is a strict policy on photos of other people at work that has its own training we all do annually.
For those wondering about the shirt
I would wear the hell out of this shirt
It is suspicious that you have a photo of the shirt when it's folded up. Is that from YOUR closet, by chance?
Damn those are some big cans
You have a strict policy on photos of other people at work, so you post it on a public website?
The shirt is not being worn.
I fired someone for ignoring their work, falsifying the records, and instead driving around all day in the company van playing Pokémon Go. Yes, the van has GPS. Yes, they were aware of this fact.
I should add, they had worked there for nearly 30 years, and transferred to my team. The individual had probably been shirking their duty in this way for their entire career, but the Pokémon Go thing was going on for several years at least. Their previous manager didn't look into why someone with barely any customers was always so busy.
This reminds me. My work relies on items coming from a courier service. Most of our couriers are pretty timely, coming when they are supposed to and only being late on occasion. One of our couriers just decides to occasionally randomly come 1-1.5 hours late (or longer...occasionally he has come 2 hours late which is insane...you could probably walk to the facility and back in that timeframe)...despite the place he's supposed to be coming from being the closest of all the other couriers. Based on the time he is supposed to arrive to pick up his items at that facility, there should be plenty of time for him to get here. Hell, I could probably ride a bike back and forth to that facility and still make it with ample time.
Somehow, he is often the same level of lateness arriving from a facility 15 miles away than he was when he used to courerir things to us from a facility 90 miles away. The other couriers don't do this.
He gets repeated complaints but nothing ever happens and he continues to stay employed. They switched his route to be the closest facility to try and help combat his lateness. I always wonder what in the fuck he is doing when he is crazy late like that. My guess is that he is always sitting down for a bite to eat somewhere when he is supposed to be working, but who knows what the fuck he's doing. Pokemon Go is a funny possibility. One time he admitted to someone that he gets more money the later he arrives. So I'm thinking whenever he wants an extra buck then he arrives at some crazy time like an asshole.
One of my regular customers is a factory that's been around 100+ years. My contact there was a maintenance man who retired and was difficult to replace. The young guy that replaced him gets caught jacking off on security cameras. They give him a stern warning and he gets caught jacking off again. Fired.
One of my current co-workers. In his previous job, his company had him managing a warehouse by himself. Doing all the work, including the jobs that by the company handbook required two people and protective gear that they also didn't provide. When they were finished with that place they fired him for 'working unsafely'.
Not his responsibility, but still a dumb way to get rid of an excess employee.
We had one new guy getting fired for "refusing to talk to people who don't have a university degree".
That's not a firing offense, that guy has HR Director of Hiring written all over him!
Someone at a no-paper, no-phones call centre I worked at had their buddy film them taking a call then they posted it to YouTube, both of them got fired when someone in management apparently saw it online.
Was the call noteworthy in someway? Like a prank or something? Or was management just worried about some breach of privacy?
If the call center handled sensitive info like banking info or credit cards etc the entire room would likely have compliance rules and zero tolerance.
Which is totally understandable and justifiable, even if there was no sensitive info on this particular call. Zero tolerance is the reasonable stance, not trying to criticize the firing. Just sorta curious why anyone would bother to record and post it in the first place. Like, wtf were they even thinking?
Exactly this. It was a very boring job, pretty much just filling out a form for people who couldn't /didn't want to do it themselves online... not sure what about it was worth sharing to begin with, would have been terrible content lol
Early in my career, a co-worker was fired for (among other things), frequently sleeping at his desk when he was supposed to be working. The entire company was half a dozen people in a single room. I have no idea what he was thinking.
So it doesn’t exactly fit but the first job I got after my training was, as I found out later, just a stand-in for someone else who had more experience but couldn’t join until about a month or two later. So I was supposed to be fired during probation once he joined. My coworker, who was already unhappy with his job, found out about it and quit right before the arrival of the other guy to make room for me (my hero!). So I took his place and my boss was stuck with me being there. A few months later my (new) coworker and me (and a few others) quit at around the same time because it became unbearable to work at this place.
Oh boy, I've seen a few:
At a startup, one dude had obviously lied about his credentials. He was hired as a writer, but couldn't write shit. He spent the entire day hitting on women and bitching about how his ex wanted support for a child he wasn't convinced was his. He was fired about 3 days in...
When I was a student, I worked at a sports store. One girl there was, let's say, packing in the chest compartment. She was also about 17, maybe 18. Most people were nice enough to not hit on her, but one day the security guard (who was maybe late thirties at the youngest) made a comment to me to say "I would absolutely destroy her back door, you know?" (but slightly more graphic). I told management, and she was brought in. She broke down, and went over all the off-hand comments he'd made to her. The manager immediately walked out, told him he was fired, and apologised to her.
An old employer hired this guy who was a Microsoft MVP nominee. The guy was one of those types that could talk brilliantly, but couldn't take criticism. He listened to me, as I was senior, but ignored anything from managers or people at his level. To cut a long story short (I could write a book on this guy, and it would be hilarious) he lied about a project he worked on solo for six months. After checking in on his work we found he had bypassed our PR system and had been accepting all of his own requests, so no one has verified his code. It was an absolute mess. It cost the company a quarter of a million, for a project that should have brought in £50k. We later found out he was a nominee because he was so active on some Microsoft support forums, and mostly got that through posting "yeah I had the same problem" or from supplying easy or wrong answers. That loophole was closed shortly after...
That reminds me of a guy at a company party that was making lewd comments about the head of HR. He told the guy next to him he'd f her so hard, sparks would fly out of her vagina. Didn't realize he was talking to her fiancé. Then, proceeded to grope another female employee. When they called him I to the front office the next day, he honestly had no idea he was getting fired. He thought he was getting a promotion.
A salesman for the company forged sales orders. As soon as the company started billing the supposed customers he was discovered and asked to leave immediately. No severance (which you by law are entitled to), just leave, and we won't file charges. I have no idea what possessed him to do something so stupid....
No severance (which you by law are entitled to)
Not when you're terminated with cause.
Committing crimes on the clock is more than enough reason to fire someone. Dudes incredibly lucky he was asked to resign instead of being fired and charged.
Messaged in a work chat to "come and grab a laptop before they get asset tagged 😉" when we got a big donation of laptops
I once long ago worked in the incoming mail department for are insurance company. It was basically data entry.
Thing was, there wasn't enough work.
There were two teams of five, plus a supervisor for each team, and a manager above them.
So what would happen was, we would arrive in and go to our spots, a few minutes later the main would arrive. Most days there was 100 pieces of mail to process, a really busy day may have twice this amount.
Even the most complex items would take me 10 minutes to process. The bulk was around 3 minutes, given the above, could personally have processed all the mail on an average day, with 3hrs to spare for complications.
On an average day, I got in the order of 30-40 minutes of work.
On slow days, it was more like 20.
I started coming in late, sleeping at my desk. Wandering around, going up to the upper management offices and the roof.
I eventually got fired, after months of this behaviour. Not because I was underperforming, no! I got fired, because I was "effecting the moral of the team"
I can see the point of why I was fired. I was an arse, I wasn't suitable for the role.
What did your other coworkers do all day?
Pretend to work, or were incompetent.
Similar things happened to me too. Could finish day's work in an hour. It was a small company, didn't have extra work they could give me, didn't like I was idle most of the time since we had co-working space. And didn't increase my salary even through they said they'd increase based on performance on provisional period.
They finally increased salary after 9months (said they'd do it in 3-6), and it was nominally higher like everyone else. Resigned the next day. When I went back few months back to get something every face was new one except the upper management and their family.
So basically they count on people to leave in a year or two, so they can hire other batch of fresh graduates in low salary again.
I worked in a glasshouse for a while. Since everything is glass, and the temperature is pretty high, the new guy went to change his pants from long ones to short ones. The son of the boss, who just started recently, decided he did not like it and fired him on the spot.
I thought it was really stupid. Unfortunately there was no talking him out of it. The guy was hard to work with, and part of the reason I quit that job later.
the new guy went to change his pants from long ones to short ones.
Wait so was he fired for wearing short pants, for leaving with the intention of changing his pants, or because (the reason I initially thought the glass was relevant) the new guy changed his pants within view of the boss's son through the glass walls?
It was because he went to the changing rooms to change his pants. So he was away from work like maybe 10 minutes.
Work in a warehouse where boxes open all the time and fall out on the floor. This supervisor found a box of spilled pens and used one of them to write something down and they fired him for stealing 😂. I think they were looking for a reason cuz he was kind of uncontrollable.
I know someone who watched their coworker come into work absolutely hammered, sit at the front kiosk thing and yell at customers, piss their pants, and pass out. They didn't have a job anymore when they woke up.
Stealing cases of beer and cartons of cigs every weekend for an entire summer even after the grocery store had started asking questions about who was stealing the beer and cigs.
Sadly it was like 10 ppl in total across a number of the stores in the city.
I worked at a assembly plant. One dude was throwing small screws at another coworker. He was fired for it.
A reply to a personal email from the direct boss but sending it to every other boss in the enterprise and including something in the line of "stop touching my balls!!!" ("deja de tocarme los cojones").
Could that be translated more colloquially to "stop busting my balls"?
reminds me of a google review I saw once where a bar owner in Japan replied to a review and said something like "next time you are in town punch me in the face" which probably meant hit me up, but I loved it
I saved your comment to give myself another laugh in a few weeks. Amazing.
I think it could be. I'm not a native English speaker, so...
If it was meant in a "lay off me" or "get off my back" way, I think "stop busting my balls" would be an accurate translation
Not quite fired but close enough. I know a guy who had gotten his 100% disability from the military during his first enlistment (basically only worked for about 2 years and then medical said he was borked so he was going to collect a paycheck for the rest of his life)
Then he popped positive for smoking weed on a random drug test and lost it all. Now he's being discharged on an 'other than honorable' which means he loses all his benefits.
Someone got hired as an IT Support Desk Technician. On his 5th day, he told the CEO that this job was temporary and he had no intentions of staying as he wanted to work in IT in a school.
5 minutes later he was fired.
That is stupid from both of them.
Dont tell your boss you dont expect to be there long.
Dont expect your workers to want to be there long unless you offer good options to advance and educate themselves. Especially for a help desk job... that's very often an entry job to get a foot into the IT door.
That's not a silly thing though. Pretty much all jobs are temporary.
I'm at an MSP that services quite a few school districts. We lose techs to them somewhat regularly.
Working in IT - Desktop support. One of my co workers picked up a ticket to go replace a keyboard in HR. HR was in a different building and it was mid winter and really cold out. He grabbed his coat and walked over there to replace the keyboard. Apparently he had a fat stanky bag of weed in his coat pocket. It was apparently very noticeable. A phone call was made before he even got back, and he was immediately let go.
This was before any kind of legalization existed in the area.
What kind of HR rat snitched on him?
It's HR. That's basically their job. They pretend they are there to protect the employees, but they are mostly there to protect the company.
Ugh the war on drugs is so stupid.
Bringing an illegal substance to work is even dumber. Even if it is legal its pretty dumb to bring it to work
There was a car wash service nearby where I lived, it was places at the end of supermarket parking lot. They got luxury Dodge Challenger car to polish its rims. An employee of that car wash decided to take a ride and crashed the car on a tree. He didn’t even have driving license.
We were a small team canvassing for a nonprofit. So we would go out to markets and busy areas and talk to people all day trying to get donations.
Well one time we were out during election times and this guy from our team spent the majority of the day campaigning for a local candidate. That was his last day on the team.
Guy tried to enlist the boss's brother in law to falsify work. "We don't have to walk all the way up the mountainside to do the work, the client will never check it". Then he went home, leaving said brother in law to do all the work by himself.
A week after getting fired, he called the boss about the performance bonus that was promised at the start of the contract.
I just remembered someone got fired from my first week of working at my job... But I literally can't remember what they looked like or their name. It's freaking me out
Anyways he got fired because he left our client in the waiting room of a hospital. (We work with the special needs and left with all his medical information)
I worked in a call center for an internal support team. We had a group that started early in the morning since our headquarters was on the West Coast and calls would come in really early from the East Coast offices. Every Friday we would organize a group order for breakfast from a local diner and I usually was the one who would go and pick it up (long before DoorDash). One particular morning the order was missing a side of bacon for one of the team members. This person got so angry that they didn't have their bacon, they decided it would be a good idea to call the diner from the middle of our office while most agents were on the phone with end uses. They proceeded to yell at and lecture the poor diner worker who answered the phone saying things like "You forgot my damn bacon, I think you did it on purpose" and "What are you gonna do to fix this?" The call lasted a couple minutes as most of us were looking at one another in shock. Unsurprisingly, they did not return on Monday and we all couldn't believe someone was fired for missing bacon.
Watched a guy with an iPad stuffed down the front of his pants walk out through a metal detector. The outline and part of the box were very visible.
I was working in the IT admin office for a time while doing software development, and got to witness this guy who came in to have his laptop fixed/swapped; and he said "You guys don't like, check the laptops for files and stuff, right?".
And the IT guy was legendary, didn't skip a beat, was like "Nah, nah, we don't have time for that crap.".
As soon as the guy was out of the room, we checked his laptop's files.
Porn. So much porn. Like, gigs of it, and this was in the early 2000's when that meant a lot.
We went to HR, and they called him up and reviewed, and SOMEHOW, he dodged the bullet and they retained him. The reason? It was his porn. You read that right. He had gigs of porn of him banging his stripper GF on his laptop, and because it wasn't "downloaded" porn, he got off.
Then a month later he was let go when he was found taking pictures with his cell phone over the cubicle wall of a female employee without her knowledge.
But I'll never forget the mental gymnastics that happened to convince HR that porn only meant pictures of "other people" being naked, not himself and his GF.
I have a similar story. One of the security guards was found to have a hard drive full of BDSM porn. When interrogated about it, she said "It's not pornography. Those are my holiday photos." And sure enough, she was the one holding the whip.
The compromise reached was that she wouldn't put her holiday photos on her office computer any more.
in the early 2000s*
A kid got fired for finding a pen on the ground. Person returned for the pen and then called corporate claiming the kid stole the pen
OK, so we were having a Christmas luncheon at work. HR made the flyer. It said "Holiday" party. Somebody felt that was part of the war on Christmas, and crossed out Holiday and wrote Christmas. That wasn't the issue. Another guy took offense to that guy, and made a counterfeit flyer for the company Cthulu summoning. It said that the human sacrifice would be at 12, lunch at 1 so bring a change of clothes. He posted those all over.
That's a firing.
this mother fucker got fired on his day off! something about stealing boxes or some shit.
Making a racist joke in from of those people lol
I mean if one of my co-workers made a racist joke I'd report them.
This feels like a bait question to get people to break the new "no politics" rule.
Working at a call center and we had bonuses for people that could book the most hotel rooms (hotels.com). This one lady suddenly started winning all the bonuses day after day. This went on for almost 2 weeks. Then the FBI showed up. Turned out she was just stealing people's CC numbers and booking them hotel rooms without them knowing.
Uh... That's gotta be the lowest possible profit way to steal someone's credit card funds. She could have just spent the money on the cards.
I did this briefly years ago for a hotel chain (the booking, not the stealing). We got an extra quarter for everyone we transferred to another department for deals or some shit. We were supposed to ask people if they would like to hear about it but I found out that as long as it transferred they could immediately hang up and I still got my bonus. After that every caller I had got transferred to the other department for the rest of the time I worked there.
I made an extra few hundred bucks and got canned about the same time I found a job in my field. No FBI involved, though.
Let's be honest, corporate was just mad they didn't think of it sooner! :p
It was me, I left a bad review for the pizza place I was working for. Owner was pissed, but to be fair I waited 2 damn hours for my delivery and when it still never showed up I just cancelled the order. I wasn't even getting a deal on it.
WOW. RUDE.
(Them, not you.)
I got fired when the company decided to downsize.
"How is that dumb?" you ask? That happened less than two weeks after I was hired. The boss man's speech indicated that that was the result of a long deliberation by corporate. So if you knew there could be layoffs any moment, why the fuck were you hiring?
This is usually done to keep things going as normal as possible for as long as possible. Once people start noticing something is wrong, the best people start looking elsewhere. Before you know it, not only is the company in financial trouble, but it can't recover because some of the best people left. At least one time I witnessed, the company was working on layoff plans and even limited bankruptcy, but at the same time negotiating with the investment firm that owned part of the company to get more money. If they got the money, everything would be fine. It wasn't till that fell through, they had to start laying people off.
Exactly. Companies are typically working on multiple conflicting scenarios because you don't know which it's going to be
As if the best people won't leave once the layoffs start
Right but you're trying to avoid them leaving before that in case you get a win and don't need to make the lay-offs. If they leave earlier the win you're hoping for may no longer be enough to save you.
Yup, I worked for a company that was laying off but they were still hiring because, "they had a hiring policy." Absolutely nonsensical.
What do you think would happen if the C-suite called HR and told them "we're about to announce a downsizing in 2 months, stop hiring people"?
I worked for a company that did just that and it was the best way to do it because a lot of people left on their own.
The problem is that this way, your best people with the most options leave first.
Those you want to keep long enough to do the re-structuring and make the numbers on the books look good, so you can sell the company before it disintegrates completely.
Aren't those people also the first to be let go? They're the most expensive and you can maximize short term profits by letting go to expensive employees and hiring on cheap ones.
Not always. I think the best people think they WON'T be let go and some others who don't perform, figure they are on the chopping block.
In our case it didn't matter because they wound up having four rounds of layoffs before shutting that location down entirely. So it really wound up being WHEN you were fired, not IF.
Because they're heartless.
This is technically fired, but it's more like quitting. It doesn't perfectly fit this thread but I love telling this story.
A few months into my first real job, the engineers got their raises (not me, I was new). 0%, after record profits, the team busting their ass and working insane hours, and promises of good raises. I think they got some gift cards or something.
One of my coworkers goes back to his desk, packs some stuff, walks to his car, and doesn't come back. He got paid for a full month before they finally fired him. We got a beer after and he was like "oh I don't think I'm gonna go back" in the most Office Space way
Did they not realize he wasn't coming in anymore? How did he continue getting paid for a month?
Our boss was like "I'm sure he's mad but he'll cool off" for way too long lol
We also worked some insane hours across many locations so it wasn't abnormal to not see your office mates for weeks at a time
There was a woman who was a retail store manager who just upped and left for the Congo. (Yes, really) Corporate didn't fire her for a year. (Yes, really)
A whole team called in sick on the same day, went camping, posted pics to Facebook, shared the pics at work the next week in front of the boss.
They were asking for this, weren't they?
Boss saved money on throwing a team building event…
I worked with a guy who's wife had just had a baby and the baby was sick. The guy was very good at his job but was working from home without really asking permission. We have some leeway in this matter but technically he didn't clear it. His supervisor really had it in for him and was trying very hard to get him fired for falsifying his time card. I don't know why he didn't like him, but the supervisor was a real ass. It may have been racist motivation, but I'm not sure.
I should point out that I had asked this guy to do some work for me that I didn't have the capability to do and this guy approached it in such a unique way that the customer and some universities were really interested in his work. This is a defense contractor environment where every working hour has to be accounted for. Whenever I asked the guy a question whether via email or telephone, he always responded immediately. It was all computer code so I didn't see a problem with this.
When he came into work and told me what was going on I immediately contact the manager on his behalf.
Well bottom line is that management pretty much dropped the subject and the supervisor was walked out of the facility. Turns out he had been falsifying his own time card the whole time. How's that for hypocrisy?
Justice served.
I got fired for reading the newspaper during my lunch break. Once a week this newspaper came with a for hire section that also included career advice and al that stuff. I was reading that part but the CEO called me into his office to tell me off. I called his bluff and he fired me.
I was scheduled to lead a team in China for a few weeks and after that had to go to the US for some other job. Sadly people that are fired can't work off premises anymore so the staff manager begged me to accept their withdrawal of my discharge.
I kindly declined and got payed out a years' wage. Took the time to reorientate into less toxic work environment. I now work with politicians, don't know what happened there.
I think the CEO firing you meant that he wasn't bluffing.
He first lade a threat. Then I called his bluff and then he pushed through.
In that way I got my full year off.
The stupid thing was that I was fired for reading a newspaper. I didn't take it up to court because I knew I was getting a full years pay if they fired me that way.
How do you get a full-year's pay after getting fired?
Contractual and lawful reasons.
You can't be fired without proper cause so when they fire you without proper cause the wil have to keep you on board for a while or choose to pay you out for that amount of time. I was sort of a foreman with a teal of about 20 technicians and I also had to work directly with our customers. They deemed me a liability because I was fired so they chose to pay out.
Same with salesmen. When you fire them without proper cause they want you out of their network as soon as possible and won't take the risk of letting you work with costumers anymore so they just pay out the amount of time that is needed.
In Canada. If I get canned my severance is 1.5 years salary. (Based on length of emplyment.) It's even better in Europe. It's what happens when a country doesn't flipflop between two right wing parties and actually has a party focused on the working class.
Cries in American
Yeah like, lol
This CEO thought that someone who was going to lead a team in China for his company would look for work through the newspaper?
This is about 20 years ago. Anyway, the absurdity of the situation still strikes me today. I was reading the newspaper provided by the company and mister manager was angry that I read something he didn't like so he tried to force me into submission.
Worked at IBM. Co-worker was in the datacenter, saw a bluescreened machine, and rebooted it. Much chaos ensued. Machine was part of a stability testing project, team running it was OTW to the DC to look at the machine, and were very confused when they arrived that it was running. "Helpful guy" was chastised, given a warning about touching machines that weren't his responsibility.
Two weeks later. Same guy. Same machine. Same bluescreen. Guess what he did? He rebooted it. Again.
Walked to the door that day.
First time was an honest mistake. Second time... That's all on him.
Exactly. Always wondered what he was thinking the second time, lol!
Harvey’s Hamburgers counted the times I punched in 1-3 minutes past my official start time (despite me being there 20 minutes in advance all times) as being “late” and fired me based off of this.
The two other employees were both pregnant with the manager so I have a suspicion that I got fired because at that time I couldn’t get pregnant. I still can’t get pregnant now because I’m a man, but I also couldn’t get pregnant back then.
I glanced at your username after reading this and thought it said PregoBoi lol
Finally after all these years I learned that u actually can get pregnant as a man as long as you eat so many perogies. It’s a food baby and mines named Samantha.
And if it’s a boy?
Samantha.
Thasaman.
Now that there are no other men around I can impregnate all the women. Oh wait, I already did that.
Homie out here flexing with his extremely motile sperm.
That managers name? Elon Musk.
Dudes name was Clint. Imagine giving birth to a human child and then looking down at the pink noisemaker and thinking “that’s a Clint”.
Posting a selfie of himself holding a burger and a pop next to the "No food, no drinks, no photographs" sign in the secure datacenter?
I love this one
Omg, that's hilarious!
I have a co-worker (in an open, shared office) who
He’s been with the company for 20 years.
The trick is within the company for 20 years. If you're the guardian of some ancient forgotten but critical knowledge, you become impossible to fire
He's the guardian of some secrets about a very high profile company, involving some of the higher-ups.
And also has an officially recognized disability, in a unionized company. It is big enough for them to hide him away from public view, rather than risk him airing their dirty laundry in the court case that will come if they fire him.
The best move for management in this situation is to "promote" him, into a new role that segregates him from the rest of the team. No office space work in the basement thing, but something that makes him distinctly a different role/title, and physically gives him a small office down the hall.
It doesn't sound like much, but any physical distance will be nice for you and others like you. It also removes depression when you know he's the same role but not held to the same standards. Eventually all that crap takes its toll, and good people quit...or worse, they stop caring and don't quit.
The saying one bad apple can ruin the bunch is very true in work situations.
This guy sounds like a straight shooter with upper management written all over him. Legend.
Lmao
George Costanza meets Peter Griffin.
At a place I worked at previously, there was a guy who got fired because the company found out that he had been hiding cans of beer in the water tank part of the toilet.
Yes...you read that right, he would "take a bathroom break" so he could pound a beer a few times throughout the day lol.
I wouldn't critique it that much honestly, except for the fact that he operated heavy equipment for his job, so yeah, not safe at all.
Restaurant Christmas party, guy walks out of the bathroom drunk af and tripping on shrooms with his dick out. Owner and their kid were right there when he came out. Instantly fired and lucky he’s not a sex offender
Taking hallucinogens at a work function is bold.
„Aaahhh this party is ass lemme go to Mars right quick „
Probably me telling my manager to go fuck herself.
I think it was justified, but barely.
It was a fast food joint, so not exactly a job I was willing to take shit over.
I have long hair, and have since jr high. So did other employees, but only women and girls. A hair was found in food and it had to be mine, despite my hairnet, despite it being the wrong color, and not the same length.
I pointed all this out and she told me I needed to cut mine. I asked if this was a new policy for everyone, she said just me. So I told her to go fuck herself. Now, I'd have just said no politely, and let her fire me for something bullshit and collect unemployment. But back then, I had less self control.
After that, it was probably a dude I worked with at a nursing home. Weird dude, but a generally good partner to work with. Unfortunately, he liked stealing panties from patients. Why? Nobody knew. He said he didn't wear them, and it wasn't a sex thing. And that's all he would say on the subject.
Dude was lifting them after they got back from laundry services, stuffing them in his pocket. He had taken enough that it was noticeable, as in the rest of the staff was having trouble finding them for the patients to wear. You expect some loss of clothing via laundry, or wear and tear, but not just underwear, and not in bulk unless there was some kind of accident in laundry, like a bleach spill.
The laundry staff were questioned about it, and it was pretty obvious it wasn't them since they could have just said items were too damaged or stained, and nobody would have questioned it. They would have had records of tossing them, even if they were stealing them and faking it.
Dude got found out when he fucked up and pulled a pair out with his keys in the break room. You can't mistake a pair of big cotton panties for anything else, and the patient name was inked on.
With that, he was questioned by the head nurse, then the administrator, and gave no satisfactory answer. He did, however, return the pilfered panties when threatened with a call to the police. Not that it would have amounted to anything, but he didn't want the attention.
When I talked to him later on, he still wouldn't say why he did it. We had all kinds of silly theories cooked up, and I suspect that the one that he had some kind of mother or grandmother fixation was true, minus the bit about him being a budding Norman Bates taking them to dress up his mom's body.
Last I heard, he left the state, so I doubt I'll ever run into him to try and ask again.
A lot of damaged people in the world. We are probably all damaged, honestly. But some more than others.
Person here. Can confirm. Am damaged.
The last time I was a team lead, I would sit in on meetings and whenever this one admin assistant was present she would complain about an analyst's appearance saying things like he looked disheveled because his shirt had some wrinkles; but he was very much silicon-valley/california-shabby-chic fashioned for the time.
We got bought out by a bank complete with stereotypical old fashioned management and dinosaur sensibilities from the East Coast. She brought up the analyst again during one of our meetings that included the new management and the analyst was fired the next day.
Eastern and Western US work ideals clash all the time. I’m in CO and we are definitely a we work to play state not we live to work and I haven’t seen an actual suit worn by anyone other than a lawyer around here, even at church. As soon as someone from the east coast shows up it’s painfully obvious. We don’t have much tolerance for their go, go, go ways and usually show them a great time and a relaxed vibe to relax them a bit. They’re always perplexed at how we can perform so well with such a relaxed attitude. Doesn’t usually click that it’s correlated.
Also Colorado. Granted, covid didn't give me much opportunity here but I wore a suit this summer for the first time in about 5 years. It was a wedding and I was the officiant 🙃
Oh I’m sorry, weddings and prom are still very formal, true. But a lot are western wear these days. Good point.
Oh no, I wasn't trying to disprove your point at all! Just showing how extreme the situation needs to be to justify a suit. From what I remember most of the guests didn't wear a suit either, but I can totally see it being a thing on the east coast.
colorado felt like another silicon-valley-ish niche to me so this makes sense, but i'm surprised to hear about the work perspective because the people i worked with in colorado tended to have more socially conservative views than my californian colleagues complete w an early-to-bed-early-to-rise work ethic.
the denver-boulder area, in person, is hard to distinguish from places like austin if not for the climate and geography; the general attitudes of strangers towards me made that place no different than anywhere in texas for me.
Wait... People don't have a work-to-live attitude in CO? I live in NC where everyone works their lives away. Are you telling me I can move, even within the US, and that's not the case? I know NC is terrible for workers, but if it's that much of a discrepancy then I would pack and go elsewhere asap.
First thing I got told when I moved from NoVA to CO as a manager was people work to play. That has proven true time and time again. Snows a lot, everyone calls out and hits the slopes. Gorgeous day and they’ve just recently stocked a favorite fishing spot? Calls out to fish. Hunting season and got one of the lottery elk tags? Puts vacation in or unpaid time off since they’re extremely hard to get and goes off trying to bag and elk ok the western slope. Recently upgraded your Jeep? They’re definitely taking it off road on a mountain trail stat. Yeah, we have a ton of fun out here.
Some office administrative was going to be fired, but due to timezone confusion all her accounts were terminated before HR got to the office.
For half of the morning somebody had to pretend to be checking with IT why her computer didn't work.
Wow, that’s uncomfortable.
There's a linux command, called "touch" which sets the timestamp on a file. It's used for several things, including testing that the user has write privileges and that the filesystem is working.
I heard of a sysadmin who used to use "touch kids", creating or updating the file 'kids'. Some sort of internalised joke, I assume. His boss told him not to because it was inappropriate. Then again formally when he kept on doing it. Dude couldn't stop, like some form of muscle memory. Kept on using kids as a test filename.
So yeah, he got sacked pretty quickly.
I think the German minister of finance has a place in these comments
How is what he did dumb?
He only continued to refuse to increase the spending limit, which is basically the only thing he promised to do if he was elected.
I mean, that position is completely wrong in the current situation, but it's not a change from his position 3 years ago.
Yeah he came in with an agenda (block all legislation that could hurt his luxury car daddies). And he achieved all if that. Now his job is done and he gets to retire early.
He rendered the left-leaning government ineffective, making a shift to the right in the next election more probable, then triggered early elections.
Genius, really.
There was an ice cream party for the company. Those who attended were laid off.
I feel like I need more context. What???
It was a frozen yogurt company. The ice cream was a ruse to smoke out those not committed to the cause.
What the hell? And how didn't it ended in a massive lawsuit?
Assuming not-Montana US, you can be fired for any reason other than membership in a protected class (race, religion, etc). Attending an ice cream social, even a company one, is not a protected class.
I’ve heard of similar things. Boss wants to see who is the least busy, so they do something like open an employee gym. Then anyone who uses it is fired, because “if you have time to use the gym, you’re not working hard enough.”
Exactly. There was also a puzzle table once. The higher boss said he loved to see people building teamwork and closer relationships and liked the puzzle. I luckily knew the whole time that even though he said this he fucking hated the puzzle. I winced everytime he'd catch someone working on it. Some people are just oblivious AF. "He said he likes the puzzle!" Yeah he said that, but he absolutely does not and you're probably on the shit list now
Why??? I'm very confused!!
Used to work at a warehouse driving lift trucks and forklifts. One guy out of nowhere turns into an aisle and smashes into a stack of 50" tvs. And this was back in the day when those things were like $2k each.
We go check on it and dude reeks of spiced rum. The stinkiest of liquors. He is shit faced. He had a bottle in his locker and kept going back for more. Fired on the spot.
Tbf that warehouse was wild, half the employees were ex cons and everyone was always doing stupid stuff
Someone secretly took a photo of someone else because they didn't like the shirt and sent it to so many people not realizing they all liked the person and immediately told them. He had HR involved within minutes and she was fired. All of that happened in about 20 minutes of the photo being taken. There is a strict policy on photos of other people at work that has its own training we all do annually.
For those wondering about the shirt
I would wear the hell out of this shirt
It is suspicious that you have a photo of the shirt when it's folded up. Is that from YOUR closet, by chance?
Damn those are some big cans
You have a strict policy on photos of other people at work, so you post it on a public website?
The shirt is not being worn.
I fired someone for ignoring their work, falsifying the records, and instead driving around all day in the company van playing Pokémon Go. Yes, the van has GPS. Yes, they were aware of this fact.
I should add, they had worked there for nearly 30 years, and transferred to my team. The individual had probably been shirking their duty in this way for their entire career, but the Pokémon Go thing was going on for several years at least. Their previous manager didn't look into why someone with barely any customers was always so busy.
This reminds me. My work relies on items coming from a courier service. Most of our couriers are pretty timely, coming when they are supposed to and only being late on occasion. One of our couriers just decides to occasionally randomly come 1-1.5 hours late (or longer...occasionally he has come 2 hours late which is insane...you could probably walk to the facility and back in that timeframe)...despite the place he's supposed to be coming from being the closest of all the other couriers. Based on the time he is supposed to arrive to pick up his items at that facility, there should be plenty of time for him to get here. Hell, I could probably ride a bike back and forth to that facility and still make it with ample time.
Somehow, he is often the same level of lateness arriving from a facility 15 miles away than he was when he used to courerir things to us from a facility 90 miles away. The other couriers don't do this.
He gets repeated complaints but nothing ever happens and he continues to stay employed. They switched his route to be the closest facility to try and help combat his lateness. I always wonder what in the fuck he is doing when he is crazy late like that. My guess is that he is always sitting down for a bite to eat somewhere when he is supposed to be working, but who knows what the fuck he's doing. Pokemon Go is a funny possibility. One time he admitted to someone that he gets more money the later he arrives. So I'm thinking whenever he wants an extra buck then he arrives at some crazy time like an asshole.
One of my regular customers is a factory that's been around 100+ years. My contact there was a maintenance man who retired and was difficult to replace. The young guy that replaced him gets caught jacking off on security cameras. They give him a stern warning and he gets caught jacking off again. Fired.
One of my current co-workers. In his previous job, his company had him managing a warehouse by himself. Doing all the work, including the jobs that by the company handbook required two people and protective gear that they also didn't provide. When they were finished with that place they fired him for 'working unsafely'.
Not his responsibility, but still a dumb way to get rid of an excess employee.
We had one new guy getting fired for "refusing to talk to people who don't have a university degree".
That's not a firing offense, that guy has HR Director of Hiring written all over him!
Someone at a no-paper, no-phones call centre I worked at had their buddy film them taking a call then they posted it to YouTube, both of them got fired when someone in management apparently saw it online.
Was the call noteworthy in someway? Like a prank or something? Or was management just worried about some breach of privacy?
If the call center handled sensitive info like banking info or credit cards etc the entire room would likely have compliance rules and zero tolerance.
Which is totally understandable and justifiable, even if there was no sensitive info on this particular call. Zero tolerance is the reasonable stance, not trying to criticize the firing. Just sorta curious why anyone would bother to record and post it in the first place. Like, wtf were they even thinking?
Exactly this. It was a very boring job, pretty much just filling out a form for people who couldn't /didn't want to do it themselves online... not sure what about it was worth sharing to begin with, would have been terrible content lol
Early in my career, a co-worker was fired for (among other things), frequently sleeping at his desk when he was supposed to be working. The entire company was half a dozen people in a single room. I have no idea what he was thinking.
Well, in his dreams it did work out...
So it doesn’t exactly fit but the first job I got after my training was, as I found out later, just a stand-in for someone else who had more experience but couldn’t join until about a month or two later. So I was supposed to be fired during probation once he joined. My coworker, who was already unhappy with his job, found out about it and quit right before the arrival of the other guy to make room for me (my hero!). So I took his place and my boss was stuck with me being there. A few months later my (new) coworker and me (and a few others) quit at around the same time because it became unbearable to work at this place.
Oh boy, I've seen a few:
At a startup, one dude had obviously lied about his credentials. He was hired as a writer, but couldn't write shit. He spent the entire day hitting on women and bitching about how his ex wanted support for a child he wasn't convinced was his. He was fired about 3 days in...
When I was a student, I worked at a sports store. One girl there was, let's say, packing in the chest compartment. She was also about 17, maybe 18. Most people were nice enough to not hit on her, but one day the security guard (who was maybe late thirties at the youngest) made a comment to me to say "I would absolutely destroy her back door, you know?" (but slightly more graphic). I told management, and she was brought in. She broke down, and went over all the off-hand comments he'd made to her. The manager immediately walked out, told him he was fired, and apologised to her.
An old employer hired this guy who was a Microsoft MVP nominee. The guy was one of those types that could talk brilliantly, but couldn't take criticism. He listened to me, as I was senior, but ignored anything from managers or people at his level. To cut a long story short (I could write a book on this guy, and it would be hilarious) he lied about a project he worked on solo for six months. After checking in on his work we found he had bypassed our PR system and had been accepting all of his own requests, so no one has verified his code. It was an absolute mess. It cost the company a quarter of a million, for a project that should have brought in £50k. We later found out he was a nominee because he was so active on some Microsoft support forums, and mostly got that through posting "yeah I had the same problem" or from supplying easy or wrong answers. That loophole was closed shortly after...
That reminds me of a guy at a company party that was making lewd comments about the head of HR. He told the guy next to him he'd f her so hard, sparks would fly out of her vagina. Didn't realize he was talking to her fiancé. Then, proceeded to grope another female employee. When they called him I to the front office the next day, he honestly had no idea he was getting fired. He thought he was getting a promotion.
A salesman for the company forged sales orders. As soon as the company started billing the supposed customers he was discovered and asked to leave immediately. No severance (which you by law are entitled to), just leave, and we won't file charges. I have no idea what possessed him to do something so stupid....
Not when you're terminated with cause.
Committing crimes on the clock is more than enough reason to fire someone. Dudes incredibly lucky he was asked to resign instead of being fired and charged.
Messaged in a work chat to "come and grab a laptop before they get asset tagged 😉" when we got a big donation of laptops
I once long ago worked in the incoming mail department for are insurance company. It was basically data entry.
Thing was, there wasn't enough work.
There were two teams of five, plus a supervisor for each team, and a manager above them.
So what would happen was, we would arrive in and go to our spots, a few minutes later the main would arrive. Most days there was 100 pieces of mail to process, a really busy day may have twice this amount.
Even the most complex items would take me 10 minutes to process. The bulk was around 3 minutes, given the above, could personally have processed all the mail on an average day, with 3hrs to spare for complications.
On an average day, I got in the order of 30-40 minutes of work.
On slow days, it was more like 20.
I started coming in late, sleeping at my desk. Wandering around, going up to the upper management offices and the roof.
I eventually got fired, after months of this behaviour. Not because I was underperforming, no! I got fired, because I was "effecting the moral of the team"
I can see the point of why I was fired. I was an arse, I wasn't suitable for the role.
What did your other coworkers do all day?
Pretend to work, or were incompetent.
Similar things happened to me too. Could finish day's work in an hour. It was a small company, didn't have extra work they could give me, didn't like I was idle most of the time since we had co-working space. And didn't increase my salary even through they said they'd increase based on performance on provisional period.
They finally increased salary after 9months (said they'd do it in 3-6), and it was nominally higher like everyone else. Resigned the next day. When I went back few months back to get something every face was new one except the upper management and their family.
So basically they count on people to leave in a year or two, so they can hire other batch of fresh graduates in low salary again.
I worked in a glasshouse for a while. Since everything is glass, and the temperature is pretty high, the new guy went to change his pants from long ones to short ones. The son of the boss, who just started recently, decided he did not like it and fired him on the spot.
I thought it was really stupid. Unfortunately there was no talking him out of it. The guy was hard to work with, and part of the reason I quit that job later.
Wait so was he fired for wearing short pants, for leaving with the intention of changing his pants, or because (the reason I initially thought the glass was relevant) the new guy changed his pants within view of the boss's son through the glass walls?
It was because he went to the changing rooms to change his pants. So he was away from work like maybe 10 minutes.
Work in a warehouse where boxes open all the time and fall out on the floor. This supervisor found a box of spilled pens and used one of them to write something down and they fired him for stealing 😂. I think they were looking for a reason cuz he was kind of uncontrollable.
I know someone who watched their coworker come into work absolutely hammered, sit at the front kiosk thing and yell at customers, piss their pants, and pass out. They didn't have a job anymore when they woke up.
Stealing cases of beer and cartons of cigs every weekend for an entire summer even after the grocery store had started asking questions about who was stealing the beer and cigs.
Sadly it was like 10 ppl in total across a number of the stores in the city.
I worked at a assembly plant. One dude was throwing small screws at another coworker. He was fired for it.
A reply to a personal email from the direct boss but sending it to every other boss in the enterprise and including something in the line of "stop touching my balls!!!" ("deja de tocarme los cojones").
Could that be translated more colloquially to "stop busting my balls"?
reminds me of a google review I saw once where a bar owner in Japan replied to a review and said something like "next time you are in town punch me in the face" which probably meant hit me up, but I loved it
I saved your comment to give myself another laugh in a few weeks. Amazing.
I think it could be. I'm not a native English speaker, so...
If it was meant in a "lay off me" or "get off my back" way, I think "stop busting my balls" would be an accurate translation
Not quite fired but close enough. I know a guy who had gotten his 100% disability from the military during his first enlistment (basically only worked for about 2 years and then medical said he was borked so he was going to collect a paycheck for the rest of his life)
Then he popped positive for smoking weed on a random drug test and lost it all. Now he's being discharged on an 'other than honorable' which means he loses all his benefits.
Someone got hired as an IT Support Desk Technician. On his 5th day, he told the CEO that this job was temporary and he had no intentions of staying as he wanted to work in IT in a school.
5 minutes later he was fired.
That is stupid from both of them.
Dont tell your boss you dont expect to be there long.
Dont expect your workers to want to be there long unless you offer good options to advance and educate themselves. Especially for a help desk job... that's very often an entry job to get a foot into the IT door.
That's not a silly thing though. Pretty much all jobs are temporary.
I'm at an MSP that services quite a few school districts. We lose techs to them somewhat regularly.
Working in IT - Desktop support. One of my co workers picked up a ticket to go replace a keyboard in HR. HR was in a different building and it was mid winter and really cold out. He grabbed his coat and walked over there to replace the keyboard. Apparently he had a fat stanky bag of weed in his coat pocket. It was apparently very noticeable. A phone call was made before he even got back, and he was immediately let go.
This was before any kind of legalization existed in the area.
What kind of HR rat snitched on him?
It's HR. That's basically their job. They pretend they are there to protect the employees, but they are mostly there to protect the company.
Ugh the war on drugs is so stupid.
Bringing an illegal substance to work is even dumber. Even if it is legal its pretty dumb to bring it to work
There was a car wash service nearby where I lived, it was places at the end of supermarket parking lot. They got luxury Dodge Challenger car to polish its rims. An employee of that car wash decided to take a ride and crashed the car on a tree. He didn’t even have driving license.
Link in Polish, there are pictures, use translator for details: https://wroclaw.naszemiasto.pl/pracownik-myjni-rozbil-na-drzewie-luksusowe-auto-klienta/ar/c1-7527497
We were a small team canvassing for a nonprofit. So we would go out to markets and busy areas and talk to people all day trying to get donations.
Well one time we were out during election times and this guy from our team spent the majority of the day campaigning for a local candidate. That was his last day on the team.
Guy tried to enlist the boss's brother in law to falsify work. "We don't have to walk all the way up the mountainside to do the work, the client will never check it". Then he went home, leaving said brother in law to do all the work by himself.
A week after getting fired, he called the boss about the performance bonus that was promised at the start of the contract.
I just remembered someone got fired from my first week of working at my job... But I literally can't remember what they looked like or their name. It's freaking me out
Anyways he got fired because he left our client in the waiting room of a hospital. (We work with the special needs and left with all his medical information)
I worked in a call center for an internal support team. We had a group that started early in the morning since our headquarters was on the West Coast and calls would come in really early from the East Coast offices. Every Friday we would organize a group order for breakfast from a local diner and I usually was the one who would go and pick it up (long before DoorDash). One particular morning the order was missing a side of bacon for one of the team members. This person got so angry that they didn't have their bacon, they decided it would be a good idea to call the diner from the middle of our office while most agents were on the phone with end uses. They proceeded to yell at and lecture the poor diner worker who answered the phone saying things like "You forgot my damn bacon, I think you did it on purpose" and "What are you gonna do to fix this?" The call lasted a couple minutes as most of us were looking at one another in shock. Unsurprisingly, they did not return on Monday and we all couldn't believe someone was fired for missing bacon.
Watched a guy with an iPad stuffed down the front of his pants walk out through a metal detector. The outline and part of the box were very visible.
I was working in the IT admin office for a time while doing software development, and got to witness this guy who came in to have his laptop fixed/swapped; and he said "You guys don't like, check the laptops for files and stuff, right?".
And the IT guy was legendary, didn't skip a beat, was like "Nah, nah, we don't have time for that crap.".
As soon as the guy was out of the room, we checked his laptop's files.
Porn. So much porn. Like, gigs of it, and this was in the early 2000's when that meant a lot.
We went to HR, and they called him up and reviewed, and SOMEHOW, he dodged the bullet and they retained him. The reason? It was his porn. You read that right. He had gigs of porn of him banging his stripper GF on his laptop, and because it wasn't "downloaded" porn, he got off.
Then a month later he was let go when he was found taking pictures with his cell phone over the cubicle wall of a female employee without her knowledge.
But I'll never forget the mental gymnastics that happened to convince HR that porn only meant pictures of "other people" being naked, not himself and his GF.
I have a similar story. One of the security guards was found to have a hard drive full of BDSM porn. When interrogated about it, she said "It's not pornography. Those are my holiday photos." And sure enough, she was the one holding the whip.
The compromise reached was that she wouldn't put her holiday photos on her office computer any more.
in the early 2000s*
A kid got fired for finding a pen on the ground. Person returned for the pen and then called corporate claiming the kid stole the pen
OK, so we were having a Christmas luncheon at work. HR made the flyer. It said "Holiday" party. Somebody felt that was part of the war on Christmas, and crossed out Holiday and wrote Christmas. That wasn't the issue. Another guy took offense to that guy, and made a counterfeit flyer for the company Cthulu summoning. It said that the human sacrifice would be at 12, lunch at 1 so bring a change of clothes. He posted those all over.
That's a firing.
this mother fucker got fired on his day off! something about stealing boxes or some shit.
Making a racist joke in from of those people lol
I mean if one of my co-workers made a racist joke I'd report them.
This feels like a bait question to get people to break the new "no politics" rule.