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No one likes to get fired, but the reality of life is that most of us will go through that uncomfortable moment at one time or another.
Sometimes it’s deserved and all parties involved know it’s the best decision for everyone, but other times, the reason is so silly you can hardly believe it’s happening – and these 18 instances are definitely the latter.
18. Doesn’t sound unreasonable.
Supposedly, I “argued with the owner’s wife about working weekends”.
I specifically told them I can work weekends, but cannot work anytime with less than a day’s notice.
I’m not at your beck and call for $8 an hour, f**k me right?
17. That’s confusing.
I was fired for accidentally showing up for a shift I was not scheduled for and then leaving when I found out I was not scheduled for said shift.
16. How is this a reason?
I was fired for playing solitaire on my 15 min break when I was working as a receptionist. The doctor who owned the clinic was dumb enough to put that as the reason in my termination letter.
I collected unemployment after he tried to appeal it. They explained in great detail how stupid of a reason this was for termination.
15. Take a hike.
I was driving cars for a shady dealer.(under the table while I was laid off from my real job) Got a call that my uncle had attempted suicide and was in a psychiatric ward in a local hospital and wouldn’t talk to anybody else but me.
Told boss I had to roll. He said something like; “Your job comes before family. If you leave, don’t come back.”
I left. The next morning he called and asked me why I wasn’t at work. I hung up on him.
14. What on earth?
Got fired from a public library for taking TWO carts to collect books from the outside Dropbox instead of ONE. The past few times I emptied the dropbox on a Monday it required two trips, So I brought two carts instead.
It turns out the matter of how many carts were used in emptying the dropbox was a matter of a library board vote and I was in violation of a town ordinance.
Mind you, I wasn’t fired. I was placed on paid administrative leave pending a library board inquiry at which I was welcome to call witnesses. I couldn’t keep a straight face, so I resigned.
13. Funny how that works out.
Someone was stealing from the register. I got blamed. Turned out to be the owner’s brother (who blamed it on me). I was let go just before Thanksgiving.
I never got my job back, but the owner did apologize months later.
12. Um…
i brought my own boxcutter to work at a temp job i had worked for 2 days already because they refused to replace the blades in their box cutters, and got fired because it looked like a knife.
11. Quite capricious.
I once worked for a small private school. A new supervisor was hired, and she called an after-hours meeting the Wednesday night right before Thanksgiving. One teacher didn’t attend and she was fired.
When the new supervisor was finally let go, I heard from the owner that they had 4 lawsuits from employees being wrongfully fired.
10. This shouldn’t be such a hard concept.
During my senior year in high school, I was working at McDonald’s, it was right after Christmas and we were really busy. I’d been there 4 hours, had 2 to go, was supposed to get a 30 minute break, since we’d slowed down I asked if I could have a break.
The shift manager said no one was getting breaks. I said “thanks a lot”, she told the assistant manager (pretty sure they were sleeping together) that I told her to fuck off. He fired me on the spot. Wouldn’t even let me give my side of the story.
A week later I was working at Jack in the Box. Was a shift manager in 6 months, did that through a couple years of college, dropped out (never wanted to go anyway) and moved up to assistant manager and then a couple years later, general manager.
I remembered how crappy I was treated at McDonald’s and made sure I treated my employees well. Had the 3rd lowest turnover rate in a 95 restaurant region, had the second highest average hourly pay…and #2 in profit improvement. Take care of your people and they’ll do the same for you.
9. I guess fine?
Accepted job and notified them I would need X date off for my sister’s wedding (2 months after the start date). Came back from my sister’s wedding and shit hit the fan while I was gone.
Not my responsibility, but my name was on some of the changes in the document. Canned that day for “not being there when they needed me”
8. No big loss.
The schedule was hanging off the wall and it was magnetised. Everyones names were little magnets.
Someone knocked it off the wall and “thought they put the magnets back in the right places”
Naturally i didnt show up for my shift.
I was fired the next day even after it came to light what happened because “i should know what my shifts were”
Meh
7. A fall guy.
Worked at Best Buy in the mid 90s when I was 16. I worked selling computers, and was pretty good at it.
We also sold things like memory, and hard drives that were behind lock and key. Part of our job was to take the tagged inventory from the trucks, and put it on the shelves. This included said memory.
So I close one night, put away all the new inventory, lock it up, and hand the keys to the manager. They do their checks of our department and we leave for the night. Next day I’m scheduled, I go in and the loss prevention manager said he has me on video stealing memory. I laughed and said, show me the video. Well I’m somewhat tall, red hair, and white.
The video he shows me has an older, very short, white guy with a shaved head. He told me that it was me, and that I was fired, and only showed me the video once, and immediately turned off the monitor.
Being 16, I didn’t know any better, said some things on my way out, and I left. Turns out the loss prevention guy, and his son were stealing for years to the tune over $250,000 and the guy on the video he showed me was his son.
Anytime problems popped up of missing inventory, they just fired a random person to keep the attention away from themselves. When police arrested them, their house was loaded with televisions, computers, everything from the store.
TL;DR fired for stealing when the video was of the loss prevention manager’s son stealing.
6. And she’d do it again.
This happened over 20 years ago, at a medical insurance company. I didn’t sue them, mostly because I was young and just didn’t know that could be a thing.
I’d do it again. I wasn’t looking for kudos; someone needed help so I did what was needed. I didn’t have any idea that it was Against Company Policy. We certainly didn’t cover it in my training class!
Oh – and the lady didn’t call her insurance company instead of 911. We were trying to solve an issue with one of her claims. I came back to her having an emergency after I’d had her on hold.**
I worked in a customer service call center for an insurance company. A customer called in and had a medical emergency (probably a heart attack, but I’m not sure) while I was on the phone with her. I used the phone in the empty cubicle next to me to call 911 and stayed on both lines to be sure that EMS got to her.
I was fired because A) I took too long on calls already and this was exceptionally long, B) I made an unauthorized outgoing call, and C) I gave the customer’s personal information (name and address) out to the 911 operator.
5. It’s school, man.
I took a job with a movie theater in high school, only accepted the job because they promised me a set schedule. Me and another coworker worked it out where one of us was always on shift.
About a month after I started, they handed me a new schedule starting at 2pm. I was in class until 3. Told them no.
Got fired for my lack of commitment to the theater.
4. I hope the donor found out.
My wife got fired once for giving a high level donor (she worked for an art gallery) a bottle of water at a big dinner and art auction.
Her boss had insisted that there be no water at the event, but when the donor asked for water, my wife went and found some water.
Boss found out and fired her the next day for insubordination.
3. He should have retired out of spite.
Guy preparing to retire, who had been training me to take over his job for the past 7 months, felt I was ready to take over completely.
Boss was afraid to lose 30+ years of experience and fired me to keep the old guy for a little longer.
From what I understand there was a pretty big fight. Old guy was a wonderful reference for me with the new job I obtained, with a 20k+ pay raise, and begrudgingly agreed to stay on for another year.
2. Seems like overkill.
My father was in hospice care and his death was imminent. Asked my supervisor if I could telework for a few days so I could be with him when he passed (this was 2019 before telework became the norm). Was approved to TW but had to document what I was working on, hour by hour. Not an issue since my dad pretty much slept due to medication up until he passed.
My boss and I were both fired for not clearing this with HR before proceeding, even though I had documented proof that I was doing company business for 8hrs a day while I was out.
1. Why are employers like this?
I broke my hand and got fired for asking to take a day off to go to the doctor, I never called in there once in the five years I worked there
I’m offended on their behalf, I think.
Have you been fired for a really stupid reason? Share with us in the comments!
