“We hired a guy who pretended his mom died, and it was his mom who outed him. We knew right off the bat he was lying because the night before his call out he was going around begging everyone to take his shift so he could go party with friends. Managers didn’t want to fire him just in case it was a really unfortunate coincidence. Then his mom called in looking for him (which was weird because this guy was in his 20s). I was the one who answered the phone. “Hi, I’m looking for [name], I’m his mother. Is he there?” “Uh, no. He called out today, and, uhh… he said it was because his mother died.” “…are you fucking kidding me.” -click-“

“My sister got fired at her job as a cashier for asking customers if she could “have a small bite” of their food.”

“It was this high school kid’s first day of work at Burger King. He was there for about an hour or two when I told him to pick up trash outside by the tables and drive thru. He totally lost his shit. “I’M NOT DOING THAT! I DIDN’T SIGN UP TO PICK UP TRASH. HOW DARE YOU!??” I fired him instantly, and he practically ripped off his work shirt, threw it on the ground, and started stomping on it. Then he ran out while he was still screaming at me. I was in shock the whole time.”

“I know a friend who works in the food business. They had a guy who dropped a block of cheese on the floor, didn’t tell anyone, and proceeded to grind it up and serve it to customers. No one became sick to the best of my friend’s knowledge, but corporate happened to be reviewing the security cameras and caught him. It would have been so much better if he had just discarded the cheese.”

“A guy I knew in IT was told never to press a big red button. He was explicitly told it would shut down all the digital systems in the warehouse- a digital failsafe and reboot that took several hours that shut everything down. Later that month he pressed the button to see how it worked, shutting down the warehouse for several hours’ worth of rebooting. The red button has a glass case now.”

” Warehouse manager here. You’ll find an endless supply of hilarious firing or “walking out” stories from logistics and supply chain professionals. I recently walked out a temp who, on his first day, told a female employee he wanted to lick her up and down like a lollipop. For the entire 5 min walk to the front of the building, I was trying to help him understand what was wrong with what he said. He still left sad and confused. “

“Gave a young friend of the family a job manning a parking garage from like 6 to 2am. Just had to sit there and make sure no one fucked anything up, destroyed equipment, vandalized, etc. She decided to throw a party there, smoked out my office with all her friends, trashed the office, then lost the keys to the facility. Costing hundreds of dollars to change locks. 10$/hr to sit there, watch TV, whatever. Eff that, I’m gonna fuck this up royally.”

“Relaxed retail gig. Worker who was maxed out on unexcused absences called in sick to watch a Sunday basketball game on tv. His team was losing so he came into work to visit with his coworkers. They were all really close. He didn’t come to work to work, he came in to hang out and shoot-the-shit with his coworkers while they worked and picked up the slack for him. I had to explain to him that he couldn’t just come to work if he was sick and had to go home. He didn’t want to leave so he admitted to lying about being sick so he could watch the game. I then asked him why the hell did he come into work still. He figured since he already called in sick, he had a day off to do whatever instead of working so he was bored and thought he’d come see what we were up to. He was a really sweet guy, but a bit of an attention whore and dumbass. I felt bad for firing him but it wasn’t fair to his coworkers who worked really hard to pick up his slack. They still tease him about it to this day.”

“Talking on the shop phone. I was managing a coffee shop at the time and was in the office doing payroll, and ordering. I got a call from my boss on my cell phone asking why he kept getting a busy signal when he called our location. I went down to the shop and there’s a line of customers out the door with my one employee completely ignoring them and chatting away on the phone. I chastise her and get to work making drinks, I ended up comping a good handful of them and giving 50% off the rest. Once it had slowed down one of my favorite regulars came to me and said that my employee had been on the phone the whole time as the line built up, talking explicit details about blowjob techniques. Her excuse was that “that bitch shouldn’t have been eavesdropping on me”. I fired her that day.”

“I didn’t fire this person but got them fired. 2 days into a new job as a picture editor at a TV Station I needed pictures of some crappy lifetime movies we were playing so I emailed the picture researcher asking for them. She said she couldn’t get in touch with the production company and asked if we could just change the movie that was on. I forwarded the email to her boss simply adding “this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever read” and she was apparently let go later that day.”

“Watching porn on a work computer. Not only is it immediately flagged, it’s incredibly stupid.”

“A coworker at my apprenticeship had only 3 weeks to his degree. He stole a bunch of expensive metal. Just to sell it to a scrap yard a few kilometers away for like 10% of its worth… He got caught selling it + video footage. So he threw away a 3 year apprenticeship for maybe $60.”

“Two cooks doing lines of cocaine off the cutting boards on the line. Drugs are rampant in this industry, but goddamn.”

“I was having a burnout so took a few days off, I had some colleagues keep track of the people working under me and keep me up to date through the time off. One guy decided that this was his opportunity to go above everyones head and email the company directors about how I was doing terribly and he could do my work better. He was also insulting the work of his colleagues. He made a whole load of BS about how he could steer the company far better and how I should be fired. Now I’m an approachable person and I make it known to my employees that if there are issues with the work or how I run things to let me know. Heres the kicker. I’m a co-director, the guys covering my time off are also co-directors. We’ve been in this company from the start and got it to where it is. He was sending those emails to me. So then comes the time when I talk with the dude and he tries to deny it, then i read his emails word for word. He tried to snap my own job from under me while I took some much needed R&R, created tension in the workplace. Not the kind of person I needed on my team (and he was still on his trial month) so I fired him there and then.”

“Back in my retail days I had to constantly remind an employee to take a shower, and comb his hair, and not play Crazy Train by Ozzy over the speakers….everyday…it became too much.”

“I used to work at Tesla and one of my colleagues got fired for playing Pokemon Go while driving one of the cars a few weeks after the game came out. Playing it while driving is stupid, playing it while driving a luxury car you don’t own is even more stupid, and then doing that while sat in the car with a colleague we all knew would tell our boss in that situation? C’mon man…”