I got sent home from my first job on my first day because of bad behavior, and all I could think about was that my parents were going to kill me.
Turns out, by the grace of God, I still had a job, and the manager who sent me home was actually the one who ended up getting permanently fired so, booyah!
I’ve never been officially fired from a job — that was the closest I ever came. In this AskReddit article, people share their personal stories of something akin to what I experienced or the real thing.
1. That’s a lot of money wasted
“I worked at Roche as a security guard for a while. One day I was walking the floor of the manufacturing area and was asked to accompany a guy to get a roll of Palladium. Palladium was used to make the test strips that go into blood glucose meters, its an insanely expensive metal and comes in rolls that cost (at the time) around $100,000 each.
I walked with him to get it and while he was getting the roll off the shelf something happened and three rolls fell into another shelf and a lot of rolls cascaded to the floor. This ruined them. The total damage was almost a million dollars. He wanted to leave right then and avoid the firing but I convinced him he might not get fired since it was an accident. He was gone the next day.”
2. How did he not get fired?
“An acquaintance once came close to getting fired when he forgot to switch his account and tweeted “Aussies are bloody cheats” from his company’s account.”
3. That took care of that
“I used to work at a lumber yard back in the late 80s. A guy that worked across the street kept parking in a spot on the property that was reserved for an elderly gentlemen who worked the gate and was with the company for 50 years. The guy was told dozens of times to not park there but kept doing it.
One day the nephew of the old man lost it and took one of the heavy duty fork-lifts and picked the car up and moved (dumped actually) it across the street. We all sat there with our jaws open and the dude just parked the fork-lift, grabbed his lunch pail, shook hands with the foreman and walked out. No words were exchanged… he knew he was fired but didn’t care.”
4. Bad tweet
“My coworker was drunk and playing cards against humanity and, inspired, tried to tweet “pixelated bukkake” but accidentally did it from the company account (which I ran but he had access to). People were sending us screenshots of it for days.”
5. That was close
“My best friend and I worked together for years at a small sandwich shop. One day we were closing together and we were talking some mad shit about our manager. Just ripping into the guy. We said what we said, had our laugh as we finished ranting, and I mockingly turned around and said “oh, hey (manager’s name)!!” As if he had been there listening to us the whole time.
From down the hall we hear “How’d you know I was here?! I just walked through the door!”
Cue us both sh!tting ourselves at how close we cut it.”
6. That’s cool
“I used to work in a warehouse right after high school. Not knowing how everything worked and it being my first real full time job I just did what I was told and tried my best to impress the bosses. One day in the packaging room someone had thrown a screw driver out of anger and it stuck into the drywall. Out of hilarity my manager bet the guy 2 gas station taquitos he couldn’t do it again. This became a daily thing around lunch time.
Everyone would gather around and throw screw drivers at the wall and whoever’s didn’t stick had to buy lunch. Well this was right over a $8,000 heat shrink machine. And guess who accidentally hit the control panel breaking the machine… well one day one of the owners came back looking for something specific and noticed the bludgeoned wall. Looks at all of us Owner : “so you guys have been throwing screw drivers at the wall?”
Me: hangs head “yes” Owner: “that’s cool” walks away Never got fired. He was extremely pissed about the machine I had broke though. He ended up just buying a better one.”
7. The van
“When I was a kid, there was a van that used to come and pick us all up from school and take us to daycare. One day all the daycare kids loaded up onto the van and the driver told us that we weren’t going to daycare. We were going to her house.
Apparently her 12 year old daughter had been told not to get on the school bus that day, but to get on the daycare van. She disobeyed and got on the school bus anyway. Her mom was pissed and wanted to meet the school bus at their house to catch her daughter.
So while she sat waiting for an hour for the bus to arrive with her daughter, we got to play on her trampoline in the backyard. While all of our parents were trying to figure out why our van hadn’t ever gotten to the daycare.
She eventually loaded us up into the van with her daughter and drove us back to the daycare, where police were waiting and parents were crying. It was then that realization dawned on her face that perhaps that wasn’t the best thing to do. She lost her job that day.”
8. I think I’m fired
“Happened at my last workplace. My colleague needed a specific washing machine for a customer. We had a pretty small warehouse for our stuff and it was around Christmas time, so you can imagine how much stuff we got in there on top of each other. Anyway, the washing machines were stacked up on top of each other and the one he needed was right at the edge of something that was similar to a pyramid.
The gets the fork-lifter and he aims directly at it without thinking about moving the machines on top of it. As you can already imagine, the whole thing collapsed and he basically destroyed a bunch of washing machines, TV’s and some other stuff. Our boss rushed in the warehouse and you could tell by the face of my colleague that it said: “I’m fired, right?” “
9. It never happened
“Working at McDonalds as a teenager in the 80s. Our store was running something like a double cheeseburger special for 99 cents. Guy who has issues being bossed around at work so likes to abuse teenagers pulls up to the drive through starts bitching about he can get a 99 cent double cheese burger anywhere, hell he could go to Burger King, so why don’t I give him a big mac for 99 cents?
Now our store does run a 99 cent Big Mac special once a year. It is not that time, and us order takers can’t change the price. So I explain our special right now is 99 cent double cheeseburgers, and I have no option to change the price. I do this as politely as my teenage self can, which I admit could be part of the problem.
This doesn’t sit well for our working class hero, who doesn’t like being told by a know-nothing, lazy teenager that he can’t have it like he wants it. Again with the “I could go to Burger King” bitching. He wastes about 5 minutes of my time, letting the line backup in the drive thru. Which, of course, is his intent. When if finally dawns on him that I’m not going to ring him up for 99 cent Big Macs he get hopping mad, but eventually places an order.
He comes to the window, pays. As I hand him back his change, he, still hopping mad, bitching up a storm, and now profane, mentions again he “could have gone to fucking Burger King for 99 cent double cheeseburgers.”
At this moment, I know I’m fired. Because I know what I want to say, and f*ck it I’m saying it. I smile as annoying as only teenagers can, look him straight in the eye, and say, “Well then, go to f*cking Burger King and stop wasting everyone’s time.” Then I slam the window shut and start taking the next order. He bellows like a wounded walrus, bangs on the window, shouting every profanity he can think of. I’m just smiling and taking the orders from the backup, not a care in the world. I’m a teenager. I can get a load of minimum wage paying fast food jobs like this. In fact, I’m already thinking of when I should go to the McDonald’s across town to apply.
Hell, they’re nowhere near as busy as this location, and I have a friend trying to get me to quit and come there anyway. Knowing these are my last moments makes ignoring the furious asshole easy. Eventually, he moves to the 2nd window to get his food. He shouts for a manager because no “GODDAMNED LAZY TEENAGER IS GOING TO DISRESPECT HIM!” He bellows profanely at our manager for a few minutes before snatching his food and burning out the wheels to get out of there.
My manager walks over to me, here it comes, and looks at me with innocent eyes and says as sweetly as possible, “did you tell that nice customer to ‘go to Burger King’?”
Me, proudly, “Yes I did.”
Manager, with that same sweet voice, “Good boy.” She then walks away as if the whole thing never happened.”
10. Bellhop
“When I graduated high school I got a job as a bellhop at a Marriott. The front desk would transfer all request for direction calls to our phone. First night there by myself and my phone rings, dude says he must be close because he’s been driving on Route 78 for 2 hours.
I got confused where he was and turned him around…he drove back the wrong way for an hour before he realized I messed up.
He came in furious.
Storming over to the bellstand where I was standing…..he says Hi Paul, I’m looking for a moron ..that just gave me the most half-assed directions…he’s incompetent and I need something done about this NOW!
Stunned silence…Paul? Why is he calling me Paul?
HOLY SH*T!……PAUL!!!!I totally forgot that because I was so new I had to borrow another bell mans name tag.
Sir, we’ll handle this immediately. I took out a dry cleaning ticket and wrote myself up a “disciplinary form” and assured the person that Pantarus is on probation and would be fired immediately.”
11. Forklift tale
“I started my evening warehouse job right before Thanksgiving. I needed this job too-it was a great blessing to get it. I was newly married (1 yr) and had a baby girl, we made hardly anything and this job was literally an answer to prayer.
After a few weeks I finally received my forklift certification. I was trying to turn in a tight spot and accidentally broke of the rear light housing off the forklift. Not wanting to hide it, I immediately told my coworkers and they said don’t sweat it. Just tell the supervisor, you’ll probably get your hand slapped but that’s easy to replace. So I went to my supervisor to tell him.
He looked at me with a straight face and said, “you’re fired.” I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t kidding (I had a sinking suspicion that he wasn’t), so I asked if he was serious. He then said, “yes, a safety violation in your probation period.” I started to walk away to the locker room-devastated. He called me back and said, “you’re not fired, thanks for telling me.”
That one hurt. But- I have been with the company now 8 years and worked my way into a corporate role!”
12. Andrea, not Andrew
“One of the help desk team that worked for me was sending sexy texts to his wife Andrea, when he sent a very graphic, descriptive text explaining exactly what he was going to do to her when he got home. Unfortunately, he sent it to Andrew, one of our biggest clients – Andrew’s name was next to Andrea’s in this guy’s contacts on his phone. He came rushing in to my office the second he’d sent it and I had to ring Andrew to limit the damage. Andrew was fine about it, he said he thought my guy seemed ‘really friendly’!
EDIT: This happened in 2000ish when the Nokia 3310 was around. No smartphones or anything like that.”
13. Accident
“My first day of my first job I rolled a Silverado off a cliff that had under a thousand miles on the odo. I figured I would just go turn in all my stuff and start looking for a new job but my boss was incredibly worried that I was okay, told me not to even worry about the truck and personally took me to the ER to get checked out even though I insisted I was perfectly fine. It was a government contract and Uncle Sam picked up the bill for everything and I worked there for another 16 months.”
14. You’re done
“My first job was with Honey Baked Ham. For giggles, I thought it’d be funny to answer the phone and say, “Thank you for calling HBH where our meat is always tender and moist!” There was a brief moment of silence and then I heard my manager on the other end say, “Excuse me?!”
Worked at a Day care in college. Had twin boys in my class that were very rambunctious. We had a football that I would throw to the kids a lot (especially the boys) because they seemed to really enjoy it. This was the chain of events on my last day.
Twin one steps really close to me and holds his arm back like he’s going to chunk the ball at me point blank. I said, “Don’t throw that at me.” so he of course does and runs off. I picked the ball up and threw it at him and as the ball was in mid air he turns around and the ball hits him right between the legs. He literally drops to his knees and screams. The teacher in the room next to me knew it was an accident and takes him inside to get him some water and butter him up.
Twin two approaches, “YOU HIT MY BROTHER” he goes to throw the ball at me as hard as he can and I put my foot up to kick it and I end up kicking him right in the nuts… He drops to the ground and screams. At this very moment the after school director walks out with the previous Twin and now sees the second one on the ground holding his crotch. She says, “OMG you hit another one?!” and all i could think to say was, “He hit me first!” I knew right then I was done.”
15. Totaled 6 cars
“I was working as a manager for a parking garage at a hospital in my early 20’s. Supervising the valet crew was part of my job. A lot of the valet guys were either 20 somethings without much direction or 60+ guys working a job in semi-retirement.
One of the older fellas mistook the gas pedal for the brake while trying to drive a heavily modified transport bus (modified with lifts, gurney strapping points, etc.) he totaled 6 cars before the bus finally came to a stop… I ran towards it thinking he was probably hurt… before I got there he hopped out of the bus, shook his head and looked at me “Soooo… I’m probably fired. Right?”. I don’t remember what the final total was on the insurance claim… but yes, he was fired.”
