What’s the shortest you’ve ever lasted at a job?
One day? One HOUR?
I’ve never been fired from a job before, but I’ve definitely left a couple of jobs after a short amount of time. Hey, sometimes it doesn’t work out, ya know?
But these folks saw new employees get FIRED in a hurry.
What’s the fastest you’ve seen a new employee get tossed out the door?
Here’s what folks on AskReddit had to say.
1. Didn’t lift a finger.
“When I was a teenager, I had a job at a country club washing dishes. Wasn’t the most fun or best paying but everyone in the kitchen were friends so it made the job easy.
The manager hired this new kid to help us out, so we were asked to show him how to do things. This was right before lunch was over, so within a few minutes all the dishes and plates come back. This kid took a nice long look at the big mountain of dirty dishes and goes “No! No way I’m not doing those, that’s disgusting.”
So we ask him to go sweep the other side of the kitchen and start mopping so we don’t have to later and he goes “I’m not SWEEPING the floor OR mopping it, I don’t do those kind of things. ”
At this point, one of the older guys in the kitchen says “Is there anything you can do?”
The kitchen got real quiet after that. The kid looked at the guy, then back at the pile of dishes, and then walked out the door never to be seen again. He was there for maybe 20 minutes, and didn’t lift a finger the entire time.”
2. Not cut out for it.
“I’m a video game test lead, and I once had a guy who came in on his first day, sit down for less than an hour, then shout, “I can’t play video games for eight hours!” and storm out.”
3. Couldn’t handle it.
“I was training a nurse who previously worked OB and decided she wanted to try psych. We walk into a room of a patient who believes he was under attack.
To defend himself he had feces that he was throwing at us. I think nothing of it and go in take the sh*t out if his hand and flush it. I had a long standing rapport with this patient, so I knew it wouldn’t be an issue.
This was about 3 hours into the shift. At that moment she handed me her badge and keys then left.”
4. Scared.
“The roofing company I worked for hired a new guy. He was doing ok until it cam time to leave. He refused to go down the ladder. He was too scared.
After the VP talked to him for about an hour he finally convinced him to go down. The VP went first and kinda wrapped his arms around him as he went down. The guy p*ssed his pants and it went all over the VP.
I guess he didn’t technically fire him, nor did the guy quit, but it was pretty obvious that he was no longer going to be working there.”
5. Wasted.
“Dude showed up drunk to his second day on the job.
Manager training him noticed and fired him when he proved to be too drunk to even fake sobriety.”
6. Scammer.
“Programming job, another team had hired this guy and he somehow got passed over to our team.
His resume said he worked for Google and Microsoft among others. He was a Russian, living in Canada on a work visa to the US. My first conversation with him, was him telling me about owning ‘Many domain name of very high quality’.
I had to show him how to open Visual Studio… He lasted about 3 days, 2 of which were filled with orientation crap.”
7. Wow.
“During the first day of orientation for one of our new class of customer service agents, one chick raises her hand to ask a question. “How long do we have to work until we are eligible to collect unemployment?”
The HR Generalist stood there for a minute, stunned, and then asked her with disgust “Why would you even ask that?” He then promptly escorted her out of the building.”
8. Bad boss.
“A couple months ago my boss hired a new cook to help in the kitchen at Whataburger. My boss was working with him and started yelling and screaming at him because he wasn’t moving quickly enough on the grill.
Dude had been working for maybe 20 minutes, manager was treating him like he had been doing it for years. After the manager screamed for the third or fourth time at the kid, he put down the spatula and said “f*ck this.” He was there for about 30 mins.”
9. Well, that was fast.
“We had a new sales manager starting, she turned up on the first day quite obviously inebriated and smelling pretty bad. She stumbled around for a minute without saying a word to anyone, until she managed to drop her bag on the floor, at which point out fell a half drunken bottle of booze.
That bottle of booze then proceeded to roll slowly across the office floor to the stunned silence of everyone watching, until it eventually came to a stop right at the foot of the office manager. The look on the office managers face during this whole proceeding was priceless.
Unsurprisingly she was taken into a meeting room for about 10 minutes and left straight after. The office manager swears to this day that she was really good in the interview.”
10. Too stressful.
“The year was 1996 and I was working at a McDonalds in a small town. It was the middle of the summer and a new hire walks in for his first day.
It was slow so I showed him what he needed to do to stock the sauces under the register.. this is pretty straightforward so I left him to it. Fifteen minutes later I hear a blood curdling screech “I can’t take it anymore!”
I walked out of the grill area just in time to see him walk out the door. No customers at all just stocking sauce packets ; apparently too stressful.”
11. Shady.
“I worked at a gas station a few years back. On this shady kid’s first hour on the job, he had stolen a coworker’s Vicodin and was caught hiding in the back room eating a cheeseburger he hadn’t paid for.
The manager caught him on camera pocketing the Vicodin from the coworker’s purse, as well as stealing the cheeseburger. Obviously, he was told he was fired and to wait in the back room for the police.
He bolted, and was caught by police 15 minutes later leaving a nearby Wendy’s with a bag of burgers.”
12. Didn’t even show up.
“We just hired a girl who called an hour before her first shift and said “Omg I’m so hungover and I still don’t want to get out of bed. I’m not going to make it in today, so do whatever it is you have to do.”
I had to work 14 hours that day and cursed her name each of those hours.”
13. We’re done here.
“I had just been hired on at a web development company in Provo, Utah. Borderline scam, but after six months unemployment, I needed the money and figured I’d put out the best product I could, regardless of the company’s ethics.
Day one of training. There are twelve of us sitting in a room at computers. The trainer is going over company policy, expectations, etc. We have been here about an hour.
Suddenly the boss comes in. He walks over to a guy sitting on my row, grabs him by his collar and physically lifts him out of his chair and frog-marches him out the door. No words, no explanation.
I lean back and glance over at the now vacant computer.
P*rn. P*rn everywhere.
The man literally started browsing porn within his first 60 minutes of working.”
Have you ever seen a new employee get fired in a hurry?
Or maybe YOU were that employee?
If you have stories like these, please share them with us in the comments!
