There’s a strong possibility that you’ve worked with some unprofessional people over the years. Maybe they take a joke too far or are a total slacker.
They usually make your job a lot harder–but at least they provide some form of entertainment. Usually why and how they got fired.
If you’re in management, there are occasions when someone really fools you into thinking they’re the perfect employee…until they aren’t.
These managers and coworkers have incredible tales about unprofessional employees they’ve worked with. Can any of your stories top these?
1. Keep Your Hands to Yourself, Please
I had an employee who rubbed a pregnant co-worker’s belly 3 times after being asked to stop and then asking her if her husband was good in bed.
I fired him and he asked if we could still be friends. (No) He then tried to file for unemployment after only working there for 3 weeks, part-time.
2. 5 Hours?!
I work in pizza delivery and we had a guy back in the day (fellow manager) who tried to shut down the store 5 hours before the time that corporate set for us to close. He clocked every person out and sent them home and then just refused to take the phone calls or anything like that.
He was fired immediately after our boss found out and he even tried to come into work the next day like everything was fine.
3. Well, That Stinks
Not a manager, but when I was in a meeting with some people that came up from Netflix (super important meeting, with super important people), one of the women from sales (who honestly didn’t even need to be there, but she was often very pushy about getting into meetings and usually got her way) farted, and it stunk BAD.
It was a relatively small board room, and it got quite hot during the winter. Well, this normally unpleasant room was now filled with an extremely unpleasant odor, a scent that paints a picture of an abandoned old-folks home, where the trash bags of dirty diapers and moldy soft foods were left to sit and rot away with the building.
It was a very obvious fart smell, to say the least. And we all heard it and knew who it came from.
But, as mature adults in their place of work, obviously no one said anything, and the meeting continued until the woman that farted, overwhelmed with embarrassment, interrupted the meeting in order to blame the fart ON ONE OF THE NETFLIX PEOPLE.
It was super awkward, completely derailed the meeting, and I believe even legitimately angered both people from Netflix. She was fired before the Netflix people headed back to LA.
4. Watch Your Language
I wasn’t the manager but watched the whole thing happen.
A few years ago I worked at a restaurant and we had kind of an annoying new hire. One of those, “I’m too good for this” types. It was this kid’s first job and first day out of training. One of his tables was a family with two small children, who were being obnoxious, but hey, it’s a family restaurant that’s expected.
While walking away from the table, he muttered something along the lines of, “shut up your effing kids.” Except he didn’t actually mutter, he spoke at a normal volume (and used the actual profanity).
The mother overheard and was not pleased. He was sent home and invited to not return.
5. At Least He Owned Up to It
Had an employee pass out in his truck in a customer’s driveway. A customer called me to report it and said the employee had a glass pipe on his chest.
Luckily the guy decides to call me instead of the sheriff. The employee was picked up and brought back to the shop.
When asked what was going on, he stated, “I was on break, it wasn’t weed it’s just Spice.”
Sorry bud, I don’t think this is gonna work out.
6. Don’t Bring That Into Work
One of our warehouse workers was a young man about 25 years old. He was suspected of having a substance abuse problem, mostly because of absenteeism and that he just seemed off at times.
One day, he called our office manager from the back parking lot of our building and said that he had an upset stomach and had pooped in his pants. She told him she would try to find a change of clothes to bring out to him, but before she could, he ran into the building and into the bathroom off the lobby, trailing poop smeared on his shoes onto the floor. He then took off the poop pants and left them in the bathroom and ran back outside to his car.
At that point, everyone else in the small office was running outside to escape the horrible smell. Our office manager found a pair of pants in someone’s locker and took them to where the guy was parked, but turned around when she saw him standing beside his car with no pants or underwear on.
While everyone else was figuring out how to deal with the poop in the office, the guy got in his car and left. He showed back up 3 days later as if nothing had happened. He was told to head on back home. I could never figure out why he ran inside. If you poop in your pants, wouldn’t you just get in your car and drive home?
7. Can’t Fire Someone Over a Glitter Bomb
Girl I worked with hated our manager. So she mailed a glitter bomb to the store with the manager’s name on it.
Glitter bomb worked as intended, manager opened it and was coated in sparkles. Coworker was there, began to laugh hysterically over it. During her laughter she basically confessed that she did it because she hated the manager,
Manager fired her, cue huge argument about not being able to legally fire someone over a joke. Coworker eventually stormed off and I got to clean up the glitter.
8. Stay Where You Are
He led a police chase to the office and shook them off by hiding in the underground parking.
I’m not the manager involved, but I think this fits the bill. A co-worker of mine, who was a little bit too into his car, got snapped doing twice the speed limit. Instead of pulling over for the patrol car behind him, he decided to run for it.
The GM watched it happen from his office. He took the lift down, found the co-worker’s car and told him not to bother getting out.
9. The Ultimate Temper Tantrum
I was part of a group of IT contractors together for a large international project. The client would get us apartments to live in at each implementation site for 6-12 months.
A member of my team got into a disagreement with the CTO when he came to visit our site, which resulted in her screaming personal attacks at him in the hallway when he tried to step outside to de-escalate the argument. She was fired on the spot, but then proceeded to go back to the apartment provided by the company and completely wreck it.
The site was in the middle of the desert and she had opened all of the windows/doors, turned the AC on max, stopped all of the drains and turned the water on, threw red nail polish all over the bathroom… it was the most extreme breakdown in a professional environment I’d ever seen.
Edit: This got a lot of traction! To answer the most common question: I never learned of any follow-up, i.e. legal action. I think because the CTO was embarrassed he had to ask us to check her apartment since he had already left town. While I did not fire her, I was offered the chance to work with her again 12 years later via anonymous reference and obviously rejected her as a candidate.
Think twice about burning that bridge, or at least how you do it.
10. Drinking on the Job Is Not Advisable
Had an employee (a nurse) who was drinking on the job. Snuck vodka in a plastic water bottle. We became suspicious when she began behaving erratically.
Then we noticed that the was super possessive of her bottle and never let it leave her sight or let anyone else near it. She messed up and left it at her desk when she went to the bathroom, so we sniffed it and she was busted.
Hot mess, that woman was.
11. How Were His Sales, Though?
I worked in auto sales. One of our salesmen always seemed to be up to something. Between all the lying to customers, substance abuse and constant fighting at home, he was impossible to manage.
Unfortunately, he was the type that gave the rest of us a bad name. Eventually, he got into it with our GSM (about several issues) and his GO-TO was to start making fun of our GSM’s handicapped son.
I had so much respect for our GSM. He took him to an office, told him he was terminated and walked out even though I know inside he was boiling with rage.
Glad he’s gone.
12. Kids Will Be Kids
Not a manager, but I was a higher-up over this high school kid.
I worked at a golf course during the summer as a lead instructor for golf camps and we just hired 2 high school guys to help out. Each day, I usually go through a small teaching session and then let them out on the course to play.
So I get through the lesson and send groups out to different holes. I told them I would watch over holes 1-5 and they watch over 6-9. So I gave them their own cart (big mistake on my end) to navigate quicker from hole to hole. Everything was going smoothly until about an hour later when one of the kids came up to me and said there were dirt trails all over #8 green. I take my cart over to inspect it and sure enough, these kids were doing burnouts and drifting on the green.
Now I’m irate and want to go confront these kids and scold them. I head back down the fairway towards hole 7 to find these guys and kid you not, they are literally chasing a beaver around in their golf cart.
A beaver, on a course with literally no ponds and water traps. How this beaver got there, I have no idea but what I do know is that these two got fired immediately after that.
We decided not to hire any more high school kids after this fiasco.
13. That’s an Abrupt Ending
I own a Tree Removal service. Hired a guy as a ground worker. He worked great the first two weeks. Didn’t complain, seemed to know the work, and I paid him well. The third week working for me, we did a job that consisted of two big Box Elders to be removed. It was 95 degrees that day. I told all the guys that day “Don’t push yourselves too much, make sure you’re getting enough fluids, and if you need a break, take one.” The new guy drove his own vehicle to the job as he needed to leave that day 40 minutes early to make it to a dentist appointment.
We are like 40 minutes into the job. I notice he’s moving really, really slow. Just looked really unmotivated, and like he didn’t want to be there. We had the customer’s driveway blocked off with brush everywhere. At this point, I’m still climbing in the tree and I see the new guy driving through the customer’s yard (which was like 2 acres) and then onto the road in a serious hurry. I called him probably 30 times to make sure everything was alright. Didn’t hear back from him. My other employees had no idea and were in shock. They saw him hop in his truck and just dart.
He decided right then and there “screw this” and left. Still haven’t heard from him to this day. I didn’t terminate him, that’s the closest I would have come to firing someone.
Edit: I don’t know if I would have fired him if he showed up again the next day but he would’ve had to do some pretty good explaining with a sincere apology for not letting anyone know, and having the rest of the guys pick up the slack.
14. He Was on Break Duh!
My construction company was building a new addition to a hospital. One morning, the president of the hospital called to inform me that he had just watched one of our laborers smoke crack in his truck while on break. Went to the job site, talked to the kid. He said, “yeah, I was, but I waited ’til break time.”
You aren’t supposed to drive your personal vehicle to the job site for liability reasons. Oh yeah, and you’re not supposed to smoke crack. Even on break.
We’ve had some winners over the years, but that kid took the cake.
This was definitely one of those situations that was not funny when it happened but is a hilarious story now.
15. Heeeeeere’s Your Pink Slip
Not a manager, but I had a teacher who was fired due to a spectacular display of poor judgment. I was in grade 5, so 9-10-year-olds. The teacher decided to reward some good behavior with a movie in class. We were given a choice between a movie about a family in the mountains and a movie about a ghost. We picked the family because we thought the ghost movie might be scary.
It was The Shining.
We watched it, unedited, in class. Some kids hid their faces through most of it. Most of us went home and had terrible nightmares, and the teacher was forcibly removed from class and fired the following morning.
Interestingly, I encountered my story as an urban legend 20 years later when I was completing my teaching degree.
In case you’re wondering, the movie about the ghost? It was Poltergeist.
16. I Mean, He Did Sign It…
I was going over security footage. Pretty routine—but that day, I made a disturbing discovery.
I saw an employee who didn’t want to sign his contract take it, sign it, stick it down the front of his pants, and wipe it around on his junk. After doing all that, he stuck it in the secretary’s inbox.
His contract was burned, the secretary’s inbox was disinfected, and the employee was fired.
17. Can’t Make Everyone Walk on Broken Glass
Worked as a bartender at a restaurant. I was cashing out a waitress who decided to enter the bar to “make herself a smoothie.” After fumbling around, she dropped a wine glass from the hanger and it smashed all over the counter. I told her she’s gonna need to clean that up before I can finish cashing her out. She then begged me that she needs her tips right now as her friend who she owes money to is waiting outside and that she was going to deliver the money, come back and clean it up.
She never came back and I had to replace all the ice and all the fruit garnishes on a busy weekend night because of broken bits of glass that landed all over.
Of course, the manager comes over to ask why the drink tickets are 10 minutes long and I told him what had happened. He immediately went into the schedule and gave all her future shifts away to others.
The waitress called the restaurant not even 5 minutes later to ask why her shifts have been forcibly given away and the manager replied “cause you’re fired” and hung up.
18. Quite the Entrepreneur
Had a guy that would ring up dine-in orders with 5 sodas (the amount that the people ordered), but then before they cashed out, he’d remove all but 1 or 2 and would pocket the difference.
He would give them the first copy and since of course, that’s what they ordered, they never said anything. When he realized they would be paying cash, he’d change it. I realized it one day and he was fired.
19. Didn’t See This Twist Coming
I had to send a guy to a remote gas/petroleum refinery site for an inspection, previously he had been reliable on most occasions.
However, on this occasion, he never showed up for the pre-screening test the day before he had to fly out and gave me a long-winded excuse basically blaming his car troubles. At this point, I would have gone myself to the site however I was just back from a bone graft to my collarbone, so I wasn’t going anywhere. The director made the final decision to send him anyway against my recommendations.
We flew him to the site to do his onsite induction, where he would do the D&A test anyway. Partway through his induction he got up and left… I call him that night but never got an answer, so I checked with his accommodation and the hotel claimed he had checked in within the last 1/2 hr. I was just glad nothing major had happened.
Next morning I speak to the client and the client informs me that the staff member apologized for leaving abruptly and had to rush off and deal with some personal issues. I don’t press it any longer, two hours go by and I get a call from the client stating that they’ve kicked him off-site because they’ve found him asleep on site and when they woke him he became extremely aggressive.
The client is furious about this and says we’re “a cowboy of an operation” for sending someone like this and to fly someone up the next day to finish the job.
That night we have a conference call with the client stating that we were no longer going to be working for them due to this issue, costing our company roughly $1 mill from the loss of the contract.
We bring him the day after he flies back to ask about his actions, I’m supposed to head this up and get his side of the story except before we even get into really discussing things my director asks “If we are to substance test you today would you fail?” he answers “yes” and he was told he’s being terminated.
Instantly, he starts yelling at the top of his lungs and blaming his actions on everyone else. I told him he needs to leave straight away or the police will get called. He does; he leaves. Then for the next month, our admin received emails about how I’m terrible at my job and I should be fired for not listening to his problems (which he had never spoken to me about).
So yeah that was the day I fired my brother and found out he was addicted to meth.
20. NSFW Is Self-Explanatory
Fired a guy in his first week for browsing and downloading NSFW content at work on his lunch break. Using a computer in a large open room that other people worked in. At a government organization.
So caught him red-handed, warned him not to do that, already thinking this guy will be fired at the end of the day but have to go through the channels (was a weekend shift). Then two hours later, he does it again, at the same place.
At that point, I had the VP’s approval to just fire him and we will deal with the paperwork on Monday.
Let him go, he’s shocked but doesn’t say much. Being the only manager on site, I take screenshots of the sites he visited, forward them off to HR and the VP to document it all.
A few days later, the guy’s father calls the VP to complain about his son being fired (guy was in his mid 20s).
Apparently, the fired employee never thought his being fired on the day he was busted for browsing NSFW content on a government computer in a government office was a reason to be fired. AND he never told his irate father about this.
So the VP deals with this very diplomatically saying the employee was viewing inappropriate content at work, was warned, and continued the bad behavior. Father doesn’t accept the explanation, so the VP starts reading off the list of the sites that were visited… all of them were hardcore sites geared towards … large… women.
The real kicker to this was that the VP believed that the fired employee was listening in on his father’s conversation via another phone. Just as the sites were being read off, there was a very audible click of that phone being hung up.
21. Serving Up a Bad Attitude
I used to manage a restaurant. My hosts were in charge of taking to-go orders, but I couldn’t have them away from the host stand to get them ready, so I had them grab a server that wasn’t really busy and have them do it.
On his second day, my host came to me and said “I asked the new guy to grab the to-go order for me and he told me that it’s not his freaking job.”
It was the end of the shift and everyone was putting chairs up, so instead of singling him out, I just pulled everyone together and said “Hey…if they ask you to get a to-go order, just do it. They aren’t asking you because they’re lazy…they’re asking you because I’ve told them to ask you.”
After my little speech, he turns around and starts slamming chairs around. Nope. Bye. You’re gone. You don’t get to cuss out my 17-year-old hostess and then slam things around on your second day.
22. Gym Rat CEO
I was a partner business but wasn’t involved in the day-to-day management or anything much anymore (started another venture). I’m a big rough looking black guy, which is important for the story.
I can’t remember the reason, but I needed to sign some paperwork and it had to happen within the hour ( I think it had to do with a big client and some type of equity in their business in exchange for service). So I left the Gym and drove straight to the office.
I was showered and clean, but in casual clothing – jeans and a T-shirt. When I arrived, the receptionist said very loudly “Can I help YOU?”
There was already something off with her tone, but I didn’t really care. I simply said, “Yes, I’d like to see Mr. Hampton, he’s expecting me.” I should have said my name, which she’d have maybe recognized, but I don’t know why I didn’t or she didn’t ask. She didn’t pull up a schedule, ask on the intercom, call his line or anything. She then laughed and said, “Mr. Hampton doesn’t take walk-ins, Sir.”
This alone wouldn’t be a big deal, even though I think the laugh is rude. She then turned her chair away from me with her back facing me. I said “Excuse me!” and she put headphones in. There was one other guy waiting to see our office manager for a job as a courier and he was kind of snickering and amused.
It was embarrassing and unacceptable. I then raised my voice and said “I need to see Mr. Hampton and am going ahead. As I said, he’s expecting me.” She just laughed, but wouldn’t buzz me in ( it’s a set of office suites and to get to what we call the bullpen you have to be buzzed in). I don’t know if she saw me through the glass, but the Office Manager ran up and buzzed me in, and greeted me by name.
The receptionist went white as a sheet. I could tell she was crapping bricks. I signed the papers and let my partner know what had happened. He walked out with me and just told her to pack her bags. Legitimately fired on the spot.
When I look back, I feel kind of bad for her, but it was so ridiculous. There’s no reason to treat anyone that way. A client could have turned up underdressed as well. Absolute madness.
23. It Must Have Been an Important Call
I was the manager at a local concrete plant. We hired a new yardman whose responsibilities were to drive the payloader and load the plant when needed and keep the piles of sand and aggregate pushed up and clean.
I trained him for a few hours on the machine (he had experience but on a different style of loader), and then returned to my office. A while later, I look over the yard and see the loader sitting on top of the 3/4″ gravel pile at ~45-degree angle, bucket full and raised, motionless.
I called to him on the mobile radio and got no response. The piles were in the far back of the yard, and for the next few minutes I called again, and again but my calls were unanswered. Fearing a mechanical, or worst-case scenario, a medical emergency, one of my dispatchers and I ran the 150 or so meters from the office through the yard to the loader and there he is, on his cell phone.
I climb the ladder and bang on the door and he responds in a rather loud voice, “HEY! I am on the phone!” I immediately tell him to dump his bucket and come down off the pile. At first, he ignores me but after a second request he complies, but he is visibly aggravated.
He proceeded to ask me what my effing problem was, to which I respond, “My problem is, as of right now, I need to hire someone to drive this loader. Get off the property.”
He was very sour about it and as the three of us walked back to the office, I radioed the owner, who had his termination slip ready when we got there.
24. You Always Bring Along an Accomplice
Wasn’t the manager, but worked at Walmart where I had a co-worker in another department show up, clock in, leave for his other job for the day, return after his shift at the other job was over and then clock out.
He got away with this for 2+ months. Needless to say, he AND his department manager were fired as soon as other management found out…
Not sure if they were in on it together, but either way it was entertaining watching them get escorted out of the building.
25. The Naked Truth
Most unprofessional I heard of was from the owner of my company. He told me when he was managing systems engineers at a large aerospace engineering firm while showing a bunch of customers around their facilities. Early one morning, one of his engineers heard him coming and jumped out at him from between a couple of racks completely bollock-naked.
They’d been working flat out right up until delivery, to the point where the guy was working until midnight and getting in at 6 for that last week. They were mates who’d been with the company for ~15 years together up to that point and used to prank each other in the office all the time.
The guy just hadn’t slept much and had lost track of time.
Fired immediately. I often think about how he must have felt in those few moments before jumping out. How excited was he? How certain he was going to really get the better of his mate?
26. What Was He Thinking?!
I managed a bowling center for about 10 years. I hired a kid who’d never had a job before and he was a little on the “odd” side, but he seemed pretty smart, so I took a chance on him.
About a month into his employment, a very very large woman came in with her family. This kid couldn’t believe how big she was. He kept insisting to everyone that it was a costume, “that HAS to be a fat suit”, he kept saying. He wouldn’t give it up. He then decided to get the truth… he walked up to this poor woman in front of her entire family, and asked her, “are you really that fat, or is it just a costume?”
I’ve never been so dumbfounded in my life. He was suspended immediately and terminated after the HR investigation.
The woman was so upset, she ended up getting some pretty hefty compensation from the hotel, which was much deserved.
27. Sneaky!
Wasn’t the manager at the time, but I work at a movie theatre and we, like most places, have a rewards program. You show your card to the box office cashier as you purchase your ticket and as you cycle points, you get free drinks, popcorn and eventually a free ticket.
This one cashier who seemed to always have tons of cash on her person would take the guest’s free tickets and keep them. When the next guest would come and pay exact change, she would use the free ticket and pocket the cash.
We do have cameras in the box office, so it was a shock she got away with it for so long. She got caught because a very regular guest ask to speak to our GM and was wondering why she isn’t getting free tickets anymore. Fast forward a few days, the same guest comes back but she can’t stay for her movie, she had to leave and wanted a refund.
Our GM goes down to handle it for her and notices the ticket was a free movie so we can’t give her a refund. She insisted she paid exact change to the cashier that was there a few hours ago. She reviews the footage and, sure enough, exact change for a ticket. No coupon but the cashier had it in front of her and slides it sneakily to use.
GM greeted her in the break room and told her to take her stuff home; she no longer works here.
28. Goal Achieved
I was supervising a tech support call center. One of the female techs walked up to me, her face white as a ghost. I asked her what was wrong. She didn’t say a word, just gestured for me to follow her, so I did.
She pointed me around a corner of cubes, where I found one of the agents with raunchy videos on his screen, trousers down, and hands busy.
We did him a solid. Security showed him out and packed up his belongings, wearing gloves. We told him we wouldn’t press charges if we never heard from him again. I left a few months after that, but at least while I was there, nothing more was heard from him. I think, for some reason, he really wanted to lose his job and couldn’t make himself quit or come up with a less lewd way to get himself fired.
29. That’s Bold
I work in a pub. Our manager left and they gave our assistant a temp promotion while deciding what to do.
They recruited and sent us an assistant, which she had no input over whatsoever. On his first shift, he told the staff to just take whatever crisps and snacks they wanted to eat, and he would “sort it.”
He chilled, standing at end of bar, drinking said juice and crisps for free while talking to customers about how he was gonna whip the place into shape and sort all the staff out. Pretty much talked badly about the entire place.
As a place primarily frequented by regulars, it really didn’t take any longer than a few hours for his trash talk to get back to everyone. His next shift he came in, and was told promptly not to bother coming back.
By all means, be keen to make changes. But don’t be an arse about everyone in a pub when they’re all like family and this is their other home.
30. “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow”
I run a theater company. I, one time, had hired a director who brought in her boyfriend (who had very little acting experience) for a show. While I was against this, I chose to let it slide.
What I did not let slide, was when I unlocked the theater the next morning and found them getting down on set. I normally would have just warned them (for those who don’t work in the industry, this is actually super commonplace in theaters, but usually people know how to be subtle) and had them meet with HR; however, we were doing Annie and there were 12 little girls standing directly behind me who witnessed this on-stage activity.
I ended up firing both of them and we moved Annie to the next season.
31. Doesn’t Sound Like a Happy Meal
I had an employee that we hired for a seasonal position. She worked pretty well but was kinda loud and obnoxious. She liked to sneak food to her cash register and eat between customers despite a couple of warnings. I thought I saw her with food at her register again so I went to investigate.
As I walked up to her, she had a full-on fast food meal sitting in an open drawer with a customer in front of her. She realized I was standing behind her and said “what the heck are you looking at!?”
She was terminated on the spot. She even went as far as to purposely bump into me while leaving and started screaming that I hit her. She had announced that she was pregnant a week or so earlier so of course that played into the drama, she said she was going to sue me for hitting her and her baby.
She was freaking nuts and nothing ever came of it. She called the district manager later that week to complain about me. I had already sent the DM the camera footage so he just politely told her to fuck off and we never heard from her again.
32. He Should’ve Focused More on His Job
Early on in my career, I was a manager in a big Fortune 500 company’s call center. The building we were in was built in such a way that you had 3 floors and in the middle of every floor there was a square hole which allowed you to look all the way down to the ground floor, with a big light well on top so the building was very bright.
On the ground floor, there was a set of computers that everybody could use to do all their non-work related stuff, check email, Facebook, etc.
One evening I was working a late shift when one of the security guards comes over to me and asks me to come with him. So I follow him to the balcony and he points downwards. One of the guys who wasn’t on my team directly but was part of the same language group I was a manager in, was sitting behind one of the PC’s in the middle of the floor watching adult content and giving himself the old “inside the pants rub down.”
I instantly started laughing at the absurdity of the situation, which caused him to turn around, which in turn caused him to pop out of his pants as he looks up with a deer-caught-in-the-headlights look.
The absurdity of the situation was hilarious but what made it even better is we escorted him out of the building and told him to come back the day after to collect his things and his P45 (form to show termination of employment). When I told my manager later on he went “Oh…Dino was at it again was he? Yeah we’ve been trying to catch him for ages, he used to do it in the bathroom but we never were able to catch him.”
33. Hold the Phone!
Used to manage a call center for a large corporation with a few stores that had retail counters.
Corporate would require these guys to have a minimum phone time or else you’d run the risk of being written up.
The higher-ups and their infinite wisdom decide that hold time is just as good as actual talk time. So there were a lot of employees manipulating their phone times like calling their own cell phones and putting themselves on hold. Wrote a few employees up for these actions (I don’t blame them, I would have done the same thing). Anyways, we fire one employee for typical reasons (disobedient, disrespectful, multiple warnings).
Whenever we fire someone, we review all their company emails to make sure we take care of any unfinished deals and we found an email string between him and another employee that worked on a retail counter showing off their long hold times with actual customers. They’d bad-mouth the customers saying how stupid they were. Some customers were waiting 15-20 minutes for help just so they can get their daily phone time up.
Normally I hated having to fire someone, that one was easy.
34. It Worked, Un-Till It Didn’t
Not a manager but I worked at the store and was friends with the junior manager who told me about it.
It was a well-known clothing store, my friend D was closing up for the night along with another manager P. As they were closing up they were chatting, it was Friday night so they were asking about weekend plans, etc. P said he was too broke to do anything.
D took out one of the cash bags, went to grab something else for a second, came back and started doing the cash for the night.
The store had this policy that I think is stupid: if they were under or over up to €100 they didn’t question it.
So as D is sorting out the cash for the night, P starts talking about his plans, D said “didn’t you say you were broke?” P said something about cash he forgot he had. D was suspicious but kept quiet.
The following day, P was off and D was in, he went to the head manager and told him his suspicion that P had taken some of the cash, they checked the security camera for the previous night, and sure enough in the split second D was away from the cash bag P came up and grabbed a €50 from it.
They then checked footage and realized that this guy had been swiping €50-100 every night he closed the till. He varied it so it was never exactly the same, and kept it under the “something went wrong here” limit.
The head manager called him to come in, said someone had called in sick and they needed him to cover, I guess he figured they were on to him and he never showed up. He was from a different country, I guess he went back home because he was never heard from again.
They estimated he stole a serious amount of money because he worked at the company for several years and regularly closed the till.
35. Okay…But Why Were They Sitting There?
So I was young, and I was going with my uncle in his car. We found a beer distributor truck parked in the middle of the road. Literally, he was horizontally occupying both lanes.
We waited and when we saw they weren’t planning to move, my uncle got out and gently told them to move so we could pass. They said “yeah,” but we waited another 5 min and they wouldn’t move, so my uncle got out again and told them to move, now more firmly.
“Screw off, we are working. Don’t you see? Go another way,” and they laughed.
Then my uncle calmly called his best friend, who actually was the manager of that distribution company. He told him the issue and the number of the truck and then his friend immediately said “sorry” and hung up. It seemed very rude, but then we saw that he called in the truck’s radio and we heard everything.
The manager was very angry and first told them to move, and then leave the truck there and go home. He fired them at the spot, over the radio.
36. Don’t Bite the Hand That Feeds You
Was a house manager for a men’s ministry. We took people in typically right from jail or other situations where they needed to get back on their feet and back into society.
We get a new guy sent to us that at first wanted to join in. He had the shortest time of anyone there at three days. Within those three days he: complained about the amount of work that was expected despite signing paperwork that he’d be willing to do it, left food and dirty dishes in the living room, left a broken raw egg on the floor outside his room, stole food from someone else, passed out watching tv, sold his meds for booze money, and got drunk enough he slipped and fell, resulting in him going to the hospital.
We told the people that were his counselors that he was just not going to fit in and had them pick up his stuff while he was in the hospital.
37. Pics or It Didn’t Happen
Doing college on the GI Bill, I got a job working hospital security. This local hospital had been gobbled up by the growing medical center and when it came on board, it had to decide whether to adopt the corporate policies or keep its own from when it was independent. I applied through the corporate HR not knowing any of this.
The GI Bill was going to come up short so I applied for the employee tuition assistance program.
Unfortunately, when they choose policies, they picked whatever was cheapest and screwed their employees, IMO. The tuition assistance where I worked was a fraction of the corporate rate because they kept the old policy. Iirc it was 1k compared to 5 or 10k.
So now I’m about finished with my degree but I have to work there for a year after I stop taking the money or pay it back. I’m kind of kicking myself because now that I have the degree I can get a better job but I would have to ransom myself and it wasn’t even for the higher rate.
Then my wife finds me an adult pair of heelies. Yes, the kids shoes with the skate wheel. It’s actually her idea that I wear them to work because I do walk the grounds so much inside and out.
I kind of had a bad feeling about that but she acted like if I didn’t then I must not like her gift. I wore them on a Sunday shift because not much goes on. It was glorious. Hospital hallways on heelies, brother, if you get the chance, do it.
So, I rollerbladed as a kid in the 90’s. No shame in my game. In fact, I got my friend to pull me with a ski tow rope when we were old enough to drive. Rollerblades have this big hard rubber brake and I’ve taken some really big hills knowing it would stop me.
Heelies have a chunky back made of rubber positioned roughly where that brake is. It is. Not. A. Brake.
I discovered this on a perimeter check when I decided to take a hill as if I were on rollerblades. I was quickly going way too fast and had a lot of hills left. I ditched. 3 complete rolls and miraculously only a scuffed pant leg and scraped radio. Also miraculously I was just off camera when I fell.
I wasn’t fired immediately but I was fired the first time my shift overlapped with the manager. I pretty much knew what was coming because I had worked a couple of evening shifts and knew he wanted to talk to me so I looked up the tuition assistance policy and was prepared.
When the day came, he actually couldn’t say the words. Looking back, I think he was actually worried I would flip out. During my time there we had been called in to stand in an office next to where a termination was happening so I knew the drill. Except now they had to fire the guy they normally call to wrestle the detox patients into restraints.
He was sweating and started to talk about the Sunday shift. I had to ask, “Do I still have a job here?” He said no and I followed up with, “The tuition policy says this and it looks like I only have to pay it back if I quit, not if I’m fired.”
He said that looked right but he would have to check with HR. I shook his hand, said my goodbyes and left. I did not have to pay it back. I got two part time jobs immediately which I built on and am still in the same field today. I didn’t try to get fired but it worked out.
Tldr: Grown man wears heelies to hospital security job and gets rightfully fired.
38. He Was Serious About Those Fries
I was a sous chef at an upscale restaurant in that historical tourist place in Virginia.
Had a fry cook get pissed at a server who decided to bypass talking to me, on expo, and talk directly to him (the fry cook). They proceed to argue about how hot the fries were that were sent out and before I could calm the situation, he pulls up a basket of hot fries and slings the contents at the server. She had some minor burns, but fortunately, his aim wasn’t good and most of the fries hit her waist area, covered by an apron.
Fry cook was immediately sent home and later fired. I also think he was charged with some kind of assault, though I don’t know what came of it.
39. That’s Not How You Train New Employees
One of our delivery drivers was supposed to be training a new employee, basically driving around and introducing them to routes and customers and that type of thing.
Well, he told the new driver to just drop him off at the park down the street and when my boss drives the 15 seconds to the park, he was smoking crack with bums. Literally smoking crack with bums at the park.
[Edit] So of course the dude got fired. Then maybe a month later we get a call from a customer saying that he was walking in the middle of a busy intersection with our company’s shirt on!
40. Sounds Like a Real Winner
I hired a new server and a few hours into his shift he took a break. I get a phone call from the owner of the motel across the street a few minutes later. He apparently got into an argument with his GF and smacked her, the motel owner saw this and confronted him and he pointed at his car and said he had a machete in there and if she didn’t mind her business he would cut her head off with it.
Needless to say, he was fired on the spot.
The next day the convenience store across the street hired him. My wife was walking by and he threatened her in front of his new co-workers, we know the owners well, called them, and he was again fired on the spot. Thankfully we never saw the psycho again.
41. Probably Worked Out for the Best
I wasn’t a manager at this place but replaced the guy who got fired.
So my friend gets me this job at a good place as a cook and after a week or two he starts telling me about the guy they fired before me.
He says that he only worked one day and came in high. He wasn’t doing much work.
So he sitting there doing nothing and one of the managers is trying to make a side of fried tomatoes but they accidentally get taken and he has to replace them a couple of times. So after finally getting this plate ready to go out, the new guy reaches over and grabs a fried tomato slice and eats it.
This place was real strict about how many pieces of food make up a side so the manager was going to have to fry another tomato slice. Fired on the spot.
A few weeks later he was arrested for pouring gasoline on his girlfriend and setting her on fire so I guess it was a good thing they fired him.
42. That Came Back to Haunt Him
This happened to a friend of mine. He worked for a kitchen supplies company that sold large equipment for restaurants. He basically just checked out and didn’t feel like doing much of anything after a certain point.
Anyway, he was in sales and part of his job requires him to fill out these reports when he made a sale or something like that. He realized pretty quickly that no one would ever check them, so he ended up filling them out exclusively with Grateful Dead lyrics.
No one caught on for quite a while until he went up for a promotion. During the promo process, management checked all of his reports and noticed what was going on. They fired him on the spot.
43. They Should Have Done a Background Check
There was a new chemical engineer on the job at a refinery. Doing great. Everyone liked him. A quick study. Already doing really great work at week #2.
But then his transcripts caught up with him. He didn’t have a chemical engineer BS. In his defense, he did attend freshman year at the college he said he got his BS from on his resume.
So, perp walk, w/ me, HR guy, security guy. Such an affable, smart kid, too bad we had to fire him for lying about being an engineer.
His business cards came after he left. Everyone in the office wanted one, just because we didn’t have much drama in the office, except for Ben the non-engineer engineer.
I Googled him… he’s gone dark.
44. A Happy Ending
Used to work at a large fast-food chain. Every 3 months there is a big full-day top-to-bottom examination of the entire shop by a company-appointed “Reviewer.” We know they are coming at some point, but it’s completely unannounced. It’s kind of the point.
If the company actually allowed enough money for these stores to follow through with head office procedures, it would be fine. But they don’t. So the stores always freak out when the person shows up.
Anyway, the “reviewer” shows up and an employee who we suspected was selling illegal substances outside of company hours (and some suspicion of during) walked into a cold room, grabbed something out of his pocket and accidentally drops an acid tab onto his hand. Instead of hiding it back in his pocket, he decided to ingest it.
All this happened while that person was checking to make sure all the cameras were working properly… so it was all seen live by myself and this “reviewer.” Fired on the spot, called the reviewer a nasty word. He ended up dealing full-time. Got arrested and narrowly escaped prison. This went on for a year or two, but then he turned his life around and is now starting to do outreach work telling his story to other at-risk youth.
45. What Kind of Establishment Is This?
Came into the restaurant to open and found that things just weren’t quite right.
Things like there were way more glasses left on the end of the bar than would be normal for after-shift drinks and there were quite a few barstools & chairs that were not flipped up on the bar or table.
When I went towards the office, I spotted a sink broken off the wall in a staff-only bathroom (only the mop bucket under it kept the pipes from breaking). The office by that bathroom had a chair in it that had an oval of poo mashed into the seat with a butt crack ridge line running down the middle of it.
At that point I’m like “What the heck happened here last night?” and walked out of the office area back to the restaurant floor where I noticed a disheveled-looking waitress sleeping on one of the booth benches.
The cleaning crew comes in early and one of them then tells me that one of the managers was there when he arrived, woke up from the noise but was completely inebriated and he found him relieving himself on the empty kegs stacked outside the beer cold room before he stumbled out.
We contact the owners and they come in to see what happened. They’re confused because the manager who was seen was not working the night before. Turns out that he and some friends came by at closing time the night before and started carrying on with an after-party with the staff that was on duty. The manager who worked that night was convinced he could go home when he was done with his work as the partying manager said he would lock up.
We assume that the manager had relations with the waitress on the chair in the office (and pooped himself) because that spot was out of view from the windows & security cameras.
The manager who was working got reamed out and narrowly avoided losing his job for such poor judgment. The waitress got suspended for a week. The manager must’ve been passed out because he didn’t respond and come in until about 2 pm but came in, still pretty drunk, apologizing saying he didn’t know what happened.
He tried to clean the poop off of the chair with paper towels (it obviously went in the dumpster anyway). Then he was promptly fired.
46. #BathroomBanksy
Not a direct co-worker, but someone at the same firm.
Repeat complaints had been made by the custodial staff and security regarding “issues” in one of the lavatories. The culprit was eventually caught and fired.
They apparently had (on multiple occasions) when working late, gone to the toilet before leaving and then proceeded to smear feces all over the cubicle walls.
One night she was caught red-handed (or more accurately, brown-handed) leaving the cubicle after her most recent Banksy.
47. The 90s Were Wild
My first boss was telling some war stories, here are the best ones. All much more interesting than mine!
In the 90s he worked for a phone company that purchased one of the first pre-paid cell phone start-ups. This was a bad deal because it came with all their baggage (employees), from top to bottom was a total mess: organized crime connections, money laundering, stolen goods, etc.
The old manager (5’3 in his 40s, fancypants) was having relations with several of the ladies. The ladies got extra perks for being his friend like extended time off and overtime pay when they did not work. It all fell apart when they learned about each other and got into a fight over him at work!
5’3” was fired and the ladies put on probation since they were afraid of losing jobs if they said no. After that, my boss was promoted and had to take over this mess. In 6 months, he fired 18 people.
One young guy had “family” connections and major anger management issues (Let’s call him AM). AM was not logging into phones, taking 2-hour lunch breaks, etc.
One day a co-worker gave him grief about slacking off, so AM walked away. He comes back with his heavy desk phone and goes behind the guy who was sitting in a chair and yanks him backward, sending the poor guy sprawling onto the ground. AM proceeded to beat the guy with his desk phone and sent him to the hospital.
Obviously, AM was arrested and fired.
One of the ladies earned extra money during lunch breaks (Let’s call her Trixie). She was giving her male co-workers a release in the bathroom for a donation. At the Christmas party, she got caught in the restaurant bathroom red-handed by one of the higher-ups. Trixie and her John were let go.
Edit: someone involved in the Trixie and John mess ended up making the mistake of telling the whole story about the activities at work.
48. She Had Everybody Fooled
I was the director of a county history museum, and we had just installed a new security system with cameras and motion detectors in each room. It also recorded when the two entry doors were locked and unlocked at the start and end of the business day.
One Monday morning, I checked the video replay from Sunday and watched in amazement as Martha, the weekend receptionist, and her boyfriend started making out at the front desk. They had to stop when the front door opened and several museum guests entered. Martha and beau waited until the guests left then went into the restroom to have relations.
While they were busy in the bathroom, a visitor came in the main entrance, walked around several rooms and left. Martha and her beau emerged 45 minutes later, then left for lunch, but cleverly left the entrance doors open. See they knew, if I checked the security open and close log for the weekend, the museum still would appear open for visitors.
They left the museum wide open, unattended for another hour and a half when they returned from lunch. While they were out several guests came in, viewed the exhibits, let their kids trash the children’s discovery room, rummaged through the front desk, stole some bills out of the donation box and left. We were very fortunate those guests didn’t steal any art or artifacts or go upstairs into the office area.
Of course, after seeing all this, I called Martha at home, told her what I had seen, and fired her. What really ticked me off is I liked Martha. Until that day I thought she was a solid, responsible employee.
49. “Straight From a Seth Rogan Movie”
I was not a GM at the time because I had stepped down to go back to college, but I did witness this and I gotta put it on here!
There was this kid that I worked with and he was hilarious, awesome, and fun to work with. He made us all laugh and was just an all-around good guy. Well, this kid was also a junkie who would go to the methadone clinic every day.
So, one day during the lunch rush, my manager ask me if I had seen Johnny (fake name) take any dollars and put them in his pocket. Johnny was on the register, laughing up a storm while making all the customers giggle. This guy was a real customer service-friendly cashier.
Frazzled by the question of if I had seen him take money, I just kind of stopped what I was doing and watched him with my GM.
After about three minutes, we saw him put multiple dollars into his pocket. We approached slowly and listened to what he was saying to customers. HE WAS ASKING THEM IF THEY WOULD LIKE TO DONATE A DOLLAR TO CANCER RESEARCH AND THEN PUTTING THE MONEY IN HIS POCKET!!!
Well, after being pulled from the register this conversation ensued, to the best of my recollection:
GM: Why are you taking money for cancer research when you know we don’t have a program like that?
Johnny: Well, I was going to donate the money after work to cancer research.
GM: Really? Were you?
Johnny: No….
Johnny then hung his head, handed my GM the money, and walked out of the store, gone forever. Straight from a Seth Rogan movie!
I miss him. Some of the jokes he told me I still tell to this day. I hope he is doing ok with his substance issues.
50. Hope She Got Some Help
I worked at an amusement park with over 200 employees working under me and I can give you so many examples. But one takes the cake.
It was a sexual harassment case, but like nothing you’ve seen. It was a guy accusing a girl, she was about 6’7″ and the size of Andre the Giant and looked like him too. Both were employees. In the end, two guys accused her but at first, there was only one.
He claimed she had been talking about having relations with him and saying super inappropriate things to him despite him saying “No”. Well, this kept happening and today she went too far and he had to stop it.
Now for documentation and for talking to her, it helps if we know as many details as possible so we asked him for more details – if he was comfortable with sharing. He wasn’t at first but then decided to tell us.
She started off with her usual, said something along the lines of “I’m gonna get real dirty with you.” He asked her to stop. She then continues on with something like “Do you know how dirty I am?” He said he asked her to stop again.
Then she says, “I’ve screwed my dog.” Just straight-faced, drops that interesting tidbit. The guy said he went and threw up.
We interviewed two others. Both had similar crazy stuff they had overheard or been told, one had also been told about the dog.
When we interviewed the girl, she didn’t deny anything and just left. The next day someone found her Twitter bio said Dog Physical Therapist. If you’d known her or seen her, she definitely is not any sort of physical therapist. The whole thing still haunts me.
