According toZety’sLeaving a Job: Termination to Resignation 2023 Report, nearly 6 in 10 (58%) of employees are afraid of being fired. In fact, 54 percent are so terrified of that thought that they admitted it scares them “more than death.“So Reddit userBalanskydecided to invite people to fuel each other’s nightmares and asked everyone on the platform to share the quickest ways they’ve seen workers getting the boot.From terrible mistakes to entitled managers, here are some of the most memorable stories they’ve received.This post may includeaffiliate links.
According toZety’sLeaving a Job: Termination to Resignation 2023 Report, nearly 6 in 10 (58%) of employees are afraid of being fired. In fact, 54 percent are so terrified of that thought that they admitted it scares them “more than death.”
So Reddit userBalanskydecided to invite people to fuel each other’s nightmares and asked everyone on the platform to share the quickest ways they’ve seen workers getting the boot.
From terrible mistakes to entitled managers, here are some of the most memorable stories they’ve received.
This post may includeaffiliate links.
This is the opposite of what usually happens, but I thought it was pretty funny. My boss was away on business and I managed a tea shop near a Starbucks years ago. This kid came in (he was from abroad) and said he was supposed to start today. We were hiring and I trained him, etc. My boss came back two days later and had no idea. The kid was in the wrong place, but he stayed with us. He was hired on the spot without even applying.
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An intern on his first day, decided to open the door of a room where a few of the seniors were having an important meeting. He briefly lifted his leg up, farted and walked away laughing.He got fired on the spot.
I worked at McDonalds in high school. We had a kid take the cash drawer, jump the counter, and run on his first day. The dumbass had fully filled out all his paperwork and everything with his real name and address though.
Onboarding with a colleague. Saw a female coworker. Said “Bet she needs to get railed reaaaal good.” Colleague: “That’s my twin sister. I’ll get you your papers, please go change.”Took less than ten minutes from entering the facility to standing jobless in the parking lot.
Isolated mine in Western Australia where you need to fly in to get to work.New start on their first day complains about tooth ache. Our on-site med team don’t do dental so they offered to fly him back to Perth to see a dentist. He accepts and just goes radio silent. No response to calls, texts or emails. After a couple of weeks it’s assumed that he has abandoned his employment and is formally terminated.A few months later a supervisor gets an email from him apologising and explaining that he had to do some time in prison. And can he come back to work…
A 20 year guy got hired to work the seafood counter. See him twice and then never again. Asked a coworker what happened.He had closed seafood one night and was walking out of the store and the 6 pounds of crab legs he’d stuffed down the back of his pants fell out in front of the closing manager.
Less than 2 hours. Worked in a kitchen. New guy came in for his first shift, gets asked to make food for the staff. Cutting up chicken to marinate, went to make the salad, didn’t wash hands in-between. So… cross contamination. Turns out he didn’t believe in bacteria. .
Started training a new waitress who got into a screaming match with a customer over how to pronounce quinoa. She lasted exactly 37 minutes. Manager just pointed to the door without saying a word.
I work in IT. At my last job this older (50-60ish) guy lied on his resume and in his interview an insane amount. He ended up getting the job he applied for in the finance department. We got his gear set up at his desk and I met him when he arrived on his first day. It was very apparent to us that he knew absolutely nothing about using computers. He couldn’t open outlook, use Excel or any of the office suite at all, and seemed completely lost in front of his computer. His new manager soon came to this realization as well and he was let go before 12:00 on his first day.Fastest turnaround I’ve ever seen in my whole career.
We had a morning “toolbox talk” to introduce the new guy… the boss made an announcement and introduced them and said what they would be doing and asked the new guy to say a few words… he gets up and the first words out of this guys mouth is “morning c#&ts”. The boss interjected and said, “you know what, don’t bother…” and told the guy to leave immediately… we all just sat there like stunned mullets.
Came in, decided she didn’t like the color of the walls, fought with the boss about painting them because the current color didn’t match her social media vibe, was fired after ten minutes, then tried to sue the boss because she wanted to quit before he fired her, apparently she couldn’t think of a way to make herself the victim in the story for her social media.
Three weeks. Which you may be thinking isn’t fast, but as a doctor is like lightning.We had a new doctor in the emergency department who was hired during covid to fill some of the rota gaps and he seemed friendly enough. He got put on his first week of nights and didn’t see a single patient, he just disappeared into the rest of the hospital. He was caught asking a first year resident how to read a hip x-ray (that was clearly fractured). He had to have all his patients re-evaluated because then his work was being brought under review. It was an absolute nightmare. Hiring standards during covid got pretty loose because we were stretched to f**k, but that sure was something. I’ve never seen a doctor show up and disappear that fast.As an aside, a doctor hired alongside him was openly worse than the level of seniority he was hired at, was open about it, was dropped down to the appropriate level to train at, and everyone appreciated that the guy knew his limits. .
New barman.Started work at 11amHelped himself to drinks behind the bar.Called a regular a c**t.Told people the food wasn’t great.Flirted with the manager’s wife.Caught ringing up half pints instead of pints and pocketing the difference.Left at 12:30pm.
I work in IT and we had a new employee starting on our customer service team. I met with all new employees to do their IT onboarding. So we are walking through getting signed into everything when one of my female colleagues came into my office to get a mouse. The new guy stands up and tells her he has a mouse for her, and motions to his crotch. I immediately sent my HR a message and they came with security and escorted him out. He was there maybe 25 minutes.
I sat him down and welcomed him to the company. During the orientation myself and other employees emphasized that smoking and vaping are prohibited in the building. It’s a big deal and we have signs everywhere stating so. I gave examples of why it’s prohibited and sent them on a 15 minute break.The boss walks into the bathroom into a cloud of vape smoke. When I asked him his response was. “I was in the bathroom, it’s a private area, you can’t tell me what I can do in a bathroom stall”. I walked him out of the building.He lasted two hours and blew a decent salary for our area.
Working in a warehouse, Hippie girl got hired sight unseen from a temp agency, showed up barefoot at the warehouse. Instant nope.
New driver/guard at an armored car company. Back from her first route, the person checking her in asked where a missing bag of money was. She was hiding it in her jacket. It was only $1200.
I worked in a bar/casual restaurant and we had to let a dude go on his first shift. He decided it was a good idea to drink all the leftovers from the glasses that came back to the bar before washing them..
Worked at a rental car company in the winter. On his first day, the brand new detailer refused to clean snow off cars. He was fired within 15 minutes of showing up.
Watched our new receptionist get walked out after 2 hours because she wouldn’t stop eating during client meetings. Not like a quiet snack full on crunchy chips and slurping smoothies while people were trying to talk. Her defense was I’m a foodie when HR stepped in.
He crashed the company car reversing it out of the garage and lied about it. It was a small dent, the incident was caught on camera. I asked him if he wanted to change his statement. He accused me of calling him a liar. It was his second day on the job.Hardest part about that was his wife was friends with my then girlfriend and he started telling everyone that I had it out for him.Don’t do favours for friends, I guess.
Came to work recklessly swerving in the parking lot and almost hit three coworkers. When confronted he smirked and said “f**k em’”.
Worked at a strip club and girl came in to audition and did great. Come back the next day for her first shift. She brought her boyfriend (nobody knew it was her bf) who tried to fight the first guy who put money in her thong during her first song before she even took anything off. She made it about 3 minutes into her first shift.
About 2 hours in a new hire for our window washing company straight up ran away 😂. Young Asian guy (maybe about 20yr) seemed eager to work, but severely underestimated how physically demanding it is to be a window washer. That day we were a crew of six guys, doing a fairly nice home in Beverly hills with large windows and after about 90 minutes my little dude asked how much longer we’d be working, I let him know it would be about 5 more hours. Bro said he was going to the work van to get his Gatorade, alright… I look back over my shoulder and he’s just took off in a full Sprint down the street and never came back lol.At $20 an hour though I don’t even blame him, truth be told that was some hard a*s work, but we did it because we were all being paid cash under the table and most of the people working for that company weren’t legal anyway.
My husband got a friend of his an interview where he was working. The friends interview went great and he got hired. He was excited and did a donut in their big gravel parking lot and they called him right after and told him that was unacceptable and don’t bother coming in.
We eliminated the position of one of our longtime employees. She was a pain in the as, and filed HR complaints all the time for perfume smells and people walking around in sandals that make “flopping” sounds, radios too loud, etc….all petty b*****t complaints. They really weren’t terminable offenses, but we just needed to get rid of her, and part of the deal was she got a 40-week severance package.The terminated employee’s Manager was relatively new, so right after she was terminated, our VP told him to contact IT Security and get access to her emails, private directories, and Instant Messages (IMs).Later that day, the Manager pulls me aside and tells me they just fired a long time female Privacy Administrator right after lunch. Apparently, when he got access to his terminated employee’s IMs, there were vile and disgusting exchanges between his ex-employee and the Privacy Administrator who were close friends. They had offensive and racist nicknames for him and other managers and VPs in the company, and all of it was there to see on a company asset.Our VP was furious she didn’t think to pull those IMs before terminating the employee and giving her a $56,000 severance, because she could have been fired for cause and saved the company a lot of money.
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We started together. He said he was way more experienced than he actually appeared to be. I was honest, I only halfway knew the job, but boss said I clearly knew it better than this guy did. It was like he’d never done it before. Few days in, he comes back from lunch smelling like weed. Got fired immediately. Can’t f**k around like that running machines. Well, he sure made me look a lot better for that first week anyway. Hope he found something better for him and quit lying and showing up high.And for what it’s worth, I love smoking weed. Just not before I clock in to bend metal.
Regular at my bar came in and ordered his regular. Beer and a shot. Served him three rounds over about an hour and a half. Then my business partners wife came in and said “ alright xxxx ready to start your training!” He had been hired as a bartender without my knowing. Started his first shift 6 deep. I didn’t even rat on him. He made it about 10min before she asked why he smelled like Evan Williams. He then dropped a beer into the ice well on his first pour. I’d say 10min is one of the fastest.
Police officer.Week 1 of training, officer in my class gets arrested. Apparently the fingerprints he provided when joining up matched an unsolved burglary.
One of my first jobs was at an amusement park. On the first day we had a meet and greet to break the ice and get to know who we would be working with for the season. Our team lead had walked off to grab some paper work, so we had an opportunity for some more candid chit chat. Pretty much immediately after she left, one of my co-workers bragged about using his brothers pee to pass the d**g test. The next day he was gone.The kicker is none of us ratted him out, he did it to himself. Turns out he was so proud of his feat that he also bragged about it on Facebook… shortly after he had accepted a friend request from one of the Parks social media accounts… Dude must have been high 24/7 to not realize how stupid of an idea that was.
Like a week. 20 year old kid at a gas station decided to sell himself beer overnight… at half price. Dummy.
10 minutes on the job she started walking outside for a “cigarette break.” We don’t have cigarette breaks at my job. She continued walking. Team leader says if she walks out, she’s fired. Apparently her cigarettes meant more to her than money she could use for cigarettes.
I work in a call center and have been there for several years. As management, we would go and introduce ourselves to new hire classes on the second or third day, and there was always at least one person who had to be the loud mouth. After we introduced ourselves, the department manager asked the trainer what they were covering that day, and the trainer said they were discussing difficult customers.Mr Loud Mouth spoke up and said, “If someone starts being a jerk with me, I’ll just tell them I know where they live and will pay them a visit. I have a trunk full of guns that will make them start being nice.” One of the other new hires said kind of sheepishly, “He really does.“We all kind of made light of it, but after we left the classroom, our manager said we needed to do something about it. She emailed the trainer who had the person in the class who said the guy did have guns come to her office. After some questions, it turned out that Mr Loud Mouth did actually have several guns in his trunk and was proudly talking about them as well as showing them to some of the classmates. Our manager called the local PD, who made him open his trunk. He had several rifles and handguns in his trunk and was immediately fired for bringing firearms onto company property and threatening to use customer information to cause harm.
Technically, he’d been with the company a while, but he was fired within a week of working in our office. Chap was a bit eccentric. He wore what i could only describe as English country gent attire for work and smoked a pipe.He’d been sent to our office to hot desk for whatever reason As the week went on he seemed to be getting more and more tense until the Thursday, when in the afternoon security came in and frog marched him out of our office whilst the big manager bloke apologised for the disruption. We then saw him get arrested outside and bundled into a police car and driven away.Turns out he was selling handguns and weapons illegally using his work email accountAccording to the security guard I chatted to they’d been on to him for a while.
I work for a towboat company that pushes barges. They hired a deckhand that we picked up at our dock. It was my job to train him, so we got him on the boat, got his gear squared away and gave him a tour of the boat. After signing off on his initial paperwork we fire up and depart to go to the fleet where the barges are kept. As we make the turn into the cut where our fleet is the boat leans a little and water spalshes up on the deck. This sends him into a panick and he is in the galley sitting in the corner crying screaming get him off of here. So we go to the back of the fleet and call the office and they send someone over in a truck and he gets off the boat. He lasted all of about 45 minutes from the time he stepped on board till he got off. Turns out he was scared of water and thought it would be ok since the boats are big and stable.
I have a distant cousin who never lasts more than a week or two at any job. The reason she gives is she doesn’t like being told what to do & since that is essentially what happens during any on-the-job training, she gets mad and leaves.
We hired a woman at a medium sized retailer as a stocker. I was supposed to train her that morning. Before we started we and the rest of the crew, about six of us total, needed to take the recycled cardboard to the dumpster. The dumpster was right outside the door and with everyone helping it would take about two trips each and then we were done.After the first trip she sat down and said,”Women shouldn’t have to do this work so I am not going to do this!”I said ok then let’s go talk to the manager and see if that’s ok.Walked her to the office and never saw her again.
New guy had a habit of coming in late for his shift. One day, he came 20 minutes late, sat down and started to eat his breakfast he brought from home. The foreman was enraged and said “F this s**t, I am done” and called the department chief to deal with him.When he came, the foreman told him “That guy came 20 minutes late again and if that wasnt enough, he sits down eating his bread rolls like at home!”. The new guy protested, said the foreman was totally lying so the department chief said “Well, lets hear your side of the story then, whats wrong here?“And, being totally serious he said “It was a Kornspitz.”. Meaning he had not eaten white bread rolls but a regional product which is basically a grain roll that looks like a mini-loaf.Its a bit hard to translate as there is no english word to describe it precisely, he basically did not protest that he is coming late and starts having breakfast but because the foreman said he was eating white bread rolls while he ate a grain product which is more like black bread.So, the chief of department looked puzzled but eventually regained composture and went in his office without saying anything to the guy. 15 minute after that, the guy got a call from his temp agency telling him to go home.
Less than two hours.It was the technical support center for a large megacorp and we worked for a vendor at that company. The guy was hired and brought in as a general support tech along with three other new hires. During onboard training he sexually harassed one of our trainers. I guess he kept trying to look down her blouse, at one point he put his arm around her out his mouth next to her ear and suggested they find a private place together at next break.
First night of training at the company head offices where they have on site accommodation for the new recruits. 2 guys fired for smoking weed in the room and set the fire alarms off forcing an evacuation of around a hundred people, including the managers, into the December rain in the early hours of the morning. .
On her first day of work she was asking all of us if she could hit someone’s vape, then when the boss realized there were too many people working they asked if anyone would like to leave for the day and this girl immediately raised her hand and then on her way out she hit my bosses car. My boss ended up calling her to come back and it took her about forty minutes to come back. She got fired right then and there.
I was working for a large corporation, and I had a highly anticipated new hire starting. I went down to security to let him in the building and get him a badge. His first words were, “Wow, your husband let you leave this morning in that skirt?! He’s a lucky man.” I just looked at the security guard, said “never mind,” and I went back to my office. I’m absolutely convinced that he just needed an accepted offer letter and had no desire to actually work.
Cabinet maker here. My boss took on a tradesman when I was still an apprentice. This guy had been stuck in a factory his whole career and didn’t know how to install a cabinet properly, so I had to tell him how to do that. He once disappeared for an hour and a half for lunch when we only had half-hour lunch breaks. He was also an alcoholic and I would constantly catch him drinking on the job. He wouldn’t show up for work even with us showing up to his door at 7:30am to pick him up on the way to site. He was getting a sweet deal too, the last employers he had weren’t paying him properly and clearly didn’t teach him st. With my boss I was running st as a 2nd year apprentice, he could’ve learnt so much and he would’ve been paid fairly but his personal life caught up with him and he couldn’t handle it. He lasted like 3 weeks with us before my boss sacked him, he was so f*****g out of it he left half his tools behind and hasn’t come back to collect them. I hope he cleaned himself up and got back on his feet because he was a cool dude otherwise.
A guy came in one afternoon after traveling interstate to us and landing a little before close of business. Fresh new contractor we’d never worked with before with a fairly rare skill set we specialized in. He popped into the office the afternoon before to get his laptop and get set up. He goes back to a hotel and comes in next morning. We had hot desks but I always got in first and got my preferred desk. He came in super early and was in next, I was pleased as we had a big day. As the new guy he sat next to his boss - me.He opens his brand new branded laptop and then heads to the toilet. As soon as he’s out of earshot the laptop starts loudly playing porn. The screen is locked and the volume is right up. In a bit of a panic I can’t get it to shut up. Not the function key shortcut for mute, not the power button, nor closing the lid would silence it. He came back from the toilet and I fired him. He left before anyone else arrived at the office and I had to explain to a customer that we were going to be late with a resource. Great days.
One lady was hired on as an accountant/finance something. There were a few weeks between her onboarding pack being mailed out and start date, which was enough time for the REAL her to realize that her identity was stolen. HR fired her when she walked in the door and the police had some questions to ask her as well.
New hire on first day was sitting down on the Job. Manager asked him what he was doing and he responded with “what the hell do you do around here” she said “do you wanna know what I do?” She walked him to the office and fired him.
I still haven’t and probably never will know the truth of it but my niece was fired 45 minutes into her first day at a restaurant and her mom had to go there and talk them out of pressing charges against her. I suspect it was theft and her mom paid them back but they won’t admit to it.
About five days. I was working groundskeeping for a cemetery and memorial garden and the owner hired his nephew’s company to lay PVC pipe to extend a water hookup 200 yards to a new hand pump. It was not a hard job—the pump was literally straight downhill. Dig, grade, lay.He did the work, then told the boss there wasn’t enough water pressure from the water company to execute the job. The owner fired his nephew but incongruously didn’t ask for his money (a couple thousand) back.We (two workers making $10 an hour) dug it up and he had somehow graded it almost 10 degrees uphill. You could eyeball it and see it was slanted.
Not sure if this counts, but when I stepped off the bus at bootcamp, the guy next to me froze up and didn’t respond to anyone. Just went catatonic. The drill instructors went from yelling to calling medical, they loaded him on a stretcher and was ambulanced off to never be seen again.
I only heard about this as I was working in another office at the time, but a newly hired co-worker was fired within his first week for looking at hentai on his work computer.Someone sitting next to him reported him to their manager, the manager came over to confirm then confronted him. The dude apparently said something like “but I’m on my break” like that makes it okay to look at hentai on a work computer in the office around other people.The manager, not knowing what to do at this point, spoke to HR. HR asked to meet with the employee who explained they thought it was okay because they were on their break. HR essentially explained it was unacceptable behavior and the employee would be let go as they were in a probationary period anyway.Did it end there? No. That employee then demanded they be cut a cheque for time worked right there on the spot, and they would not be leaving until they got their money. HR and a member of finance explained that their pay for time worked would be sent to their bank, but the employee began to yell and slam things around demanding their money. HR told them to calm down and leave the office, but they insisted they’d only leave once they had their money. HR called building security who came up and told that employee they had to go, but again they insisted on staying, security told them if they didn’t leave that the police would be called to remove them. The employee then insisted on staying, calling security’s bluff, they then called the police on the spot, at which point the employee left the office and was never seen again.Bonus note, the hentai they were looking at was My Little Pony based.TL;DR - New employee was caught looking at My Little Pony hentai on his work PC in the office around everyone, thought it was okay because he was on break. Got confronted, told he was being let go, demanded pay on the spot for time worked, wouldn’t leave, started to yell and slam stuff, security had to be called.
I fired an incompetent the same day someone hired him. I would fire the hiring manager also if I could.
I know of a guy who crashed the forklift into the workshop wall first day.
We had an intern who bragged about taking a 2 hour lunch because no one was in the office that day on Facebook.
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