15 Stories About Workers Who Got Fired for a Reason

Most people try to show their best sides at work, but sometimes things can go wrong despite all the effort. Of course, anyone can make a mistake, but in the following examples, the errors were too significant to ignore.

• Guy had a job at a medical device company where he was supposed to be putting an anti-clotting coating on some of the products. He realized that he was basically unsupervised to do his work the entire day, so he eventually started a routine where he would clock in at the start of his shift, leave the building to do whatever else, come back at the end of the shift, just move all the products he was supposed to have coated from the “In” pile to the “Finished” pile without actually coating them, and then clock out and go home. I know he was immediately fired when he was caught, and a bunch more security cameras were in to make sure nobody else tried something similar. © Ambient-Chaos / Reddit
• He was a general manager and it was painfully obvious he wasn’t paying attention to any of the finance reports I was sending him. To test my theory, one month when margin slumped, I noted the reason as “poor cost control by local management”. He never said a thing, but his superiors caught on. © readingreddit4fun / Reddit
• The new guy didn’t seem to care. He would show up to work with 2 tablets and 2 cell phones. We were pretty sure he had a side hustle he was running on the clock. He would disappear and not tell us where he was going. One day, the CEO walked in asking for help (IT), and the guy was sleeping at his desk. We quietly woke him up, and when the CEO left the room, he asked us who that was. Everyone on the team was supposed to take turns training him. The day I tried to train him, he was too busy playing a game on his tablet. He would also show up an hour late to work every day and act like it was no big deal. After 2 months of documenting and complaining to our boss, he was finally fired. © TraditionalTackle1 / Reddit

• Dude told a mystery shopper that he could give her her order for 1/4 the price if she paid cash and didn’t need a receipt. © El_Douglador / Reddit
• After borrowing a pickup from the boss, my colleague called off sick the next day. He was actually moving and using the truck to do so. He crashed it on a hard turn that he took way too fast. © ContributionFar6060 / Reddit
• When I was in high school, I worked at a car detail place. We did high-end cars. Think BMW, Porsche. Cars like that. A guy brought in his Lamborghini one day. The boss said it’ll be ready on Monday. The guy who owned the car was out with his wife Saturday night and saw his car pass by him. Turns out one of the office guys took it out for a joyride. The dummy said he didn’t think he would get caught as they were leading him out the front door. © ubottles65 / Reddit
• I worked at a marina, and we had a guy who worked the desk in the ship’s store a few nights a week as his side job. Our seasonal slip holders would have an account that they could charge things from the store, like fuel, bait, or ice, and then they’d get the bill at the end of the month. All of the slip holders would pay no problem each month, so when the accountant saw a bunch of bills not being paid, she got suspicious. Turns out the part-time guy made second accounts for some of the slip holders and would put sunglasses, clothes, coolers, and even snacks on the fake accounts with the hope that they’d be paid by our wealthy regulars and not looked at twice.
  He was obviously fired, and the owners said he’d return or pay in full for everything, or else they’d get the cops involved. © martorano10 / Reddit

• I used to work at a hotel. When I first started, there was another new hire along with me. Almost immediately, she started going up to guests and telling them sob stories about how she was broke and couldn’t afford to support her children, I think she had two or three of them and actually solicited them for money. Needless to say, she was fired on her third day. © llcucf80 / Reddit
• I was presenting my proposal to my boss, but he wasn’t paying attention. I struggled through my slides, trying to get his focus. Then disaster struck. I clicked the wrong file. Giggles erupted. My boss’s eyes bulged. Turns out, I showed a picture of me dressed as him for last year’s office Halloween party—complete with his signature suit, glasses, and even his exact pose. It was meant to be a fun tribute, but the next day, I was called into HR. My boss was clearly offended.
• My employee categorically refused to stop shouting and discussing her personal and medical issues with a coworker halfway across the office, despite my and HR talking to her repeatedly. I was her manager. I fired her, and she spent the next year texting me once a week asking for a job/reference. © FirmlyThatGuy / Reddit
• After the corporation took over the smoothie joint, I worked at a lot of things changed. One of those things was that we couldn’t trade smoothies for pizzas with the jets next door. I continued to do it, unfortunately, the district manager happened to pop in while I was enjoying some pizza. I lied and said I bought it, but one of the high school kids who worked there ratted on me. Got fired on the spot, but at least I took all the pizza with me. © Unexpected_Waffles / Reddit

• At onboarding, got told not to take pictures of anything in the office, ESPECIALLY the first party in-house proprietary software on everybody’s monitor, on pain of immediate termination.
  So, of course, on their first day, they take a selfie and post it on Facebook, and their Facebook isn’t even private. In the selfie, a monitor with the aforementioned software running is visible. Fired before the end of their first shift. © bloodectomy / Reddit
• I was going through the reports after Black Friday and saw a cashier with like 50+ swipes of his discount card. The APA and I pulled him in to interview, thinking at first it was an organized thing, but it turned out he thought he was providing excellent customer service by letting customers use his discount. Weirdest termination I’ve had, and I actually felt bad for the guy. © zigaliciousone / Reddit
• One guy had a $100k+ annual income tech job (coding) and was caught stealing a backpack full of toilet paper.
  Another guy was a sales manager. He managed 8 software sales reps. He had a DJ side business when he was younger. He tried to expense several hundred dollars for his DJ company to perform at a “Team Event”. The Sales VP pulled in each rep and simply asked, “Was there a DJ at a team event on this date?”. They all just answered honestly. Fired. Stupid. © Freaky-Freddy / Reddit
• Worked in a call center doing tech support. My colleague was already iffy on the support he was giving and had made some questionable comments and jokes to customers before. But he had been with the company for years already, and if he had straightened out, his job would have been safe. The final straw was when he answered a call, and instead of our normal greeting, he said, “Welcome to Good Burger, home of the Good Burger, can I take your order?” And the customer hung up. I assume he was doing it to make his new office friend laugh. All of his calls were being audited at that time, so I don’t know what possessed him to do that. He was walked out within an hour. It was right before Christmas, and his wife had just had a baby, too. Really crazy and stupid. © CurrentPlankton4880 / Reddit

Working in an office can have its funny moments too, as you can read in our 11 Stories That Prove Office Life Is Anything but Ordinary article.