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It’s always a huge crapshoot when you are in charge of hiring (and ultimately firing) people for jobs.
When you mix people up and throw them into the powder keg that is a typical working environment, well, you’re bound to have some crazy stories.
In this article, AskReddit users shared their weirdest termination stories from work.
1. Obviously fired
“I’m a supervisor at a landscaping company. I hired a woman in her early 40s because she seemed like a good hire.(Experience and what not)
A month went by without any issues. That was until a good employee of mine up and quit without any reason. When I met him to give him his last check he showed me text message after text message of that woman sending dirty text messages without him responding.
This created problems for that employee and his wife so she gave him an ultimatum, her or the job so he quit.
After doing a little digging, I found out he was not the only one. She would send text/Facebook messages to half the company. Also I found out she ended up making a deal with another employee that if traded sexual favors he would mow the yard by himself.
I read off EVERY text message that I saw via print off transcripts and asked if she actually sent those. She admitted to everything. Both employees were obviously fired.”
2. Too weird for Hot Topic
“I worked at everyone’s favorite mall goth emporium for a couple of years. I once had to send an employee home because rather than stretch his ears slowly, he got them pierced with some ridiculously large gauge and came in to work actively bleeding down his neck and shirt. Like, a lot. We let him go shortly thereafter – he regularly creeped on customers as well as staff, and the bleeding was the last straw. Congrats, dude. You were too weird for Hot Topic.”
3. Some Point Break action
“We never had to actually fire him (he went to jail and we never heard from him again), but the police once arrived at our office and told us one of our drivers was robbing banks and using our truck as his getaway vehicle. It was apparently really effective because he’d cover his company shirt, rob the bank, then uncover it and jump in the truck. Nobody looks twice at truck drivers in uniform. He got away with like 10 heists before he got caught.”
4. What a story
“I hired a guy who would take his paycheck on Fridays, disappear for lunch and then not show up again until like Tuesday. I got to the point where I’d hang on to his check (everyone’s checks) until Friday afternoon if I needed him to do stuff. He was blowing his whole check on booze and crack/coke. When he was there and straight and sober, he was the best guy I had.
I’d been to this managers’ workshop by HR and they straight up specifically said you can’t fire someone just for being an addict. If they wreck a company vehicle or something while under the influence, then sure. This guy wouldn’t drink or use on site, he’d just disappear so I couldn’t fire him. (And I didn’t really want to.)
One day, he didn’t show up, no phone call. He’d been dating this woman who also worked for the same company and she turned up in my office and told me he wasn’t going to be there for 30 days. I asked if he could call me because I needed to hear directly from him or it was job abandonment. Nope, he can’t call you. Well, can I call him? Nope. I looked at her a second and said, “GF, 30 days out of pocket means one of two things to me. Either he’s in jail, in which case he’s fired. Or he’s in rehab, in which case I can hold his job open because of FMLA. I really need to know what’s up with him.
Well he was in rehab. Spent Christmas in rehab. And when he got out, he stayed clean and sober, married that woman and was a model employee.
And later, long after I left the company, he was fired harassment. He passed away a couple years later from pancreatic cancer.”
5. What a thing to lie about
“We had a 20 something kid lie about his 3 year old son dying a week or so after we hired him. Supposedly the kid fell down some stairs and hit his head and a week later dead. He missed work for doctors appointments and then the funeral etc. He cried and full on balled his eyes out several times, understandably, after his son died.
Our office manager didn’t buy it though. Through a lot of digging she could find no death record, no obituary, no funeral home in the area to send flowers to. She found the boys doctor though and they called the mom and confirmed the boy was just fine. We confronted him and he said he was an addict and was detoxing. Really shook up the whole shop because most of us have kids and he was living every parents nightmare.”
6. Drinkin’
“At the head office of one of the UK’s big retailers a few years back. Temp receptionist, first day, starts off putting out call announcements and such sounding a little nervous and stumbling. As the day goes on the announcements are getting worse, stumbling over words, sounding confused. People laughed politely to themselves at the poor girl struggling with her first day.
At the end of the day she leaves, gets in to her car and weaves out of the car park like a cross eyed badger before giving a good tap to another colleague’s car. Basically she had a water bottle on her desk all day filled with vodka and had been getting more and more pissed as the day went along, before deciding to get in her car and try to drive home, she appeared to have no intention of stopping when she hit the car and it was only the fact she was so unable to get the car out of the car park that enabled someone to stop her.”
7. D*ck pics
“Boss hired a guy to stand at the desk and do simple stuff like answer the phone and print receipts. I was training him.
Guy is immediately skeezy and starts sending me pathetic messages about how he cant stop thinking about me. “girl I Woke up thinking of your luscious t*ts” etc.
I discuss with him that this is vastly inappropriate because I am repulsed by him and he is married with two children under age three.
THEN the next day he sent me a dick pic AT WORK.
Usually we need a lot of deliberation and evidence to fire people, but 5 minutes later he was being escorted out because he just handed us a clear cut case.”
8. Just plain crazy
“Was forced to hire a crazy person due to a new policy. If people were on layoff lists elsewhere you had to hire them. She even failed the interview. The correct answer to “how to calm down an irate customer” is not “berate them publicly because that calms people down”
I looked like an idiot to staff because of course I had to pretend this was a great hire because a: it’s not fair to prejudice people and b: in the eventual firing paperwork I can’t do anything wrong.
Highlights of the person’s crazy: Said, “Hmmmph, I don’t have to listen to you” to employee training her on the very first day. Had both the UPS driver and copy machine repair people (lovely, kind people) in my office with red faces saying they wouldn’t return if she was at the reception desk. Refused to let legitimate people into the office yet escorted people into the back cashier area after hours. She stalked my boss home on public transport. She failed a filing assignment with a 50% error rate. Every single day I had an employee in my office saying that she had said something insulting or weird to them.
Again, they thought I was crazy because I’d listen to the complaint. Then tell them that I expected everyone to behave professionally and there should be no retaliation.
Her excuse for one exchange, “She’s from a different island in the Philippines.” Me (inwardly rolling my eyes), “Well, here at this office we treat everyone with respect and professionalism no matter the differences in gender, race, ethnicity, country of origin, or island in the Philippines.”
HR made us keep her for 4 months before agreeing to fire her.”
9. Security!
“I worked for a retail chain in their corporate offices many years ago. We had an employee that seemed great on paper and aced her interview. We were all patting ourselves on the back at how awesome of a hire this was.
Her first project with the team was a trip with me to visit some of our distribution centers in the Northeast US. We went there and did our thing. Everything seemed fine. After a few days on the road, we went back to the office. We decided that I would write up our reports for the first 3 places we visited and she would do the other three. Simple, easy distribution of labor.
A few days go by and the director of our department asked me where our work was. I said that I’d done my part and they were in the system; she was doing the other half. Another few days, another question. I asked her about it each time and got “I’m working on it, have it in tomorrow” both times.
Apparently, she had never used Excel – it was a very simple and not complicated at all spreadsheet, no functions or tricks or anything – and was trying to cover it up. Every night she would tell our director that she’s crap at the job and he should just fire her. He tried talking her down. After nearly two weeks of this stuff, she finally uttered the magic words that he could work with: “I should just quit.”
His lightning-quick response was “I accept your resignation effective immediately” and she left. She came in the next day like nothing ever happened, and when he saw here he said “what are you doing here? You quit last night and I accepted.” She tried to backtrack it, but he’d had enough. He told her to leave. She refused. Eventually, he had to call security, who handcuffed her to her office chair, rolled her into the elevator, then rolled her right out of the building. That was the last we ever heard of her.”
10. Racist
“While working HR at a hospitality establishment, an about-to-be-terminated-but-didnt-know-it-yet employee realized that their voluntary written statement was in fact not an admonishment of other “lazy” co-workers but instead a very racist rant that was going to lead to her own firing, she grabbed the paper, ran away down the hall and ate it.
She physically ate the paper, while sprinting down the hall, as if that would stop the firing or leave her eligible for unemployment.
Carbon paper, b*tch. I had 2 more copies.”
11. Whoa!
“Guy that was hired was liked by us and our client, they interviewed him and loved him, nice older gentleman.
One day Bill doesn’t show to work, okay, it happens. Next day Bill doesn’t show, hmm, seems uncharacteristic of him. Give him a call no answer. Next day a no show, now it’s job abandonment. Give him a call, no dice. Day 4 a no show, we’re going to have to talk if he shows back up.
That night I get a call from one of my employees.
TURN IT ON 11!!!!!
Well Bill went out to a bar, picked up a girl, took her home and chained her to his bed. 3 days later she was found running naked down Conroe 105 at 3:30am.
Needless to say I didn’t have to discuss his job abandonment with him.”
12. Creep
“Just mentioned this on another sub. I hired a convicted sex offender to work at a seasonal halloween store. Turns out the guy had 243 convictions for sexual abuse of a minor, and creation or design of obscene material. Turns out he was recording his step-daughter using the bathroom and selling it online. His ex-wife called the HR anonymous report line and informed them we’d hired a pedo to sell slutty clothes to teenagers.
The official cause of termination? Since he failed to disclose his felony status, he was let go for lying on his job application.”
13. For the dogs
“Not HR but when I was a teenager I worked at a Dairy Queen. A middle aged woman who lived on the same street as me started working with us. She was working grill and purposely making mistakes on orders with special request burgers like “ketchup only” or “no mustard” because she knew they’d ask for a new one.
She was pocketing the burgers to feed to her dogs because she said she couldn’t afford dog food.. She only worked there for about 2 weeks before getting caught.”
14. Good luck
“Currently working as a recruiter for a staffing company. This morning, a guy we hired yesterday for an entry carpentry position at 18 dollars per hour called me to let me know he wasn’t coming to work Monday unless we increased his pay to 40 dollars per hour. I wished him luck with his job search.”
15. Scammer
“Former HR assistant A mechanical engineer working night shift called the security that he had been robbed by “two black guys” while working along the perimeter of the building. I check the cameras and saw that he put his tool box in his vehicle and went the area where he was suppose to repair and punched himself. That conversation was soooo awkward.”
