Firing someone is never fun. But these poor managers were given no choice...but really these people definitely should have been fired.
Crossing State Lines
“During my first real dev job, the company I was working for tried to implement a bunch of things to improve efficiency and employee satisfaction. Two interesting programs they implemented were ‘work from home’ and agile development, along with the requisite bullpens (shared team areas). What this basically meant is that we only had to show up in the office for core hours (4 hours) 3 days a week, and the rest of time we could work in shared areas, restaurants, parks, home – you name it. Sometimes, if you couldn’t be at core hours, you would just dial in. We were young and excited and dedicated, so the core team really got a lot of good work done with this model.
About two weeks after we started, our scrum master casually mentioned ‘Has anyone seen Phil?’ Phil was a quiet guy, and he was still answering emails and IM, so it took us a while to agree that no-one had actually seen him in a long time. She called him from the speakerphone in the bull-pen, and as God is my witness, here is the call that took place:
Boss: Hey Phil! What’s up?
Phil: Hey Boss – not much, what’s up with you?
Boss: Hey, we were just noticing we hadn’t seen you much lately. You ever coming back in for core hours?
Phil: …Probably not…
Boss: Oh… why is that?
Phil: Because I moved to Idaho.
Boss: …But Phil, we’re in DC?
Phil: I know.
Boss: Why didn’t you tell us you wanted to move to Idaho?
Phil: Oh. Because I knew you wouldn’t let me.”
Stealing On The Job
“Offered a job to a candidate, but had to step out of the office to grab some paperwork. Came back and a bus pass that was on the desk was missing. Newly hired employee stole it. I asked him to return it because a previous candidate dropped it and he said he needed it more than they did and walked out.”
What A Waste Of Donuts
“I used to work at a popular coffee chain and we had this supervisor who was an actor in all these local community theater things and wanted to get into stand up comedy. Well, if somebody was funny he obviously got ticked off that he wasn’t the one in the limelight. A new guy was hired who was really funny and supervisor was always being nasty to him, giving him the worst jobs and picking on him. One night, supervisor is being a complete monster and a bunch of us pipe up to tell him to chill out and he’s being horrible. Something snapped. Supervisor absolutely lost it, went in the backroom and grabbed a bunch of frozen donuts and just came out and was throwing them at funny guy angrily and just swearing at him and berating him. Then he just walked out the back door and walked off down the street.
We all thought he quit on the spot but he just went to smoke and came back 10 minutes later. By that point, someone called the manager and she came in and canned him on the spot, and he broke down crying in what had to be the most pathetic, snot ridden scene I’ve ever witnessed. Awesome.”
An HR Nightmare
“I had an employee lock another employee in a closet one time. The person that was trapped called the police from inside the closet. It was quite an HR nightmare.”
Taking On The Day One (Back)Stroke At A Time
“New guy, around 20 yrs old or so, called in sick saying he thinks he had a stroke. Since he lived across the street from the store where we worked, we all then stood and watched through the store’s glass door as he packed up his truck with beach gear and drove off with his girlfriend. Fired the next day.”
Inhale, Exhale
“Not me, but a friend of mine had to fire a sales clerk because she stole computer duster from the office and left the sales floor during her shift to hide in the supply closet and get high with it.
Don’t do inhalants, kids.”
Missing: Wannabe DJ
“I used to manage a car window tint shop. We hire some young high school kid to help us clean up, grab supplies, refill inventory – basically whatever we didn’t wanna do. Kid was a self proclaimed DJ, knowing he had school and his “shows”, I told to give me a heads up when he couldn’t make it. We didn’t really need him, so he could take off as much as he wanted and we didn’t care, just an extra hand. A day or two every week, he wouldn’t show up, won’t answer any texts or calls and then show up like nothing happened. He would posts these shows all over social media, so I would text him and ask if he’s coming in. I would get tags about coming to this party and events tonight, so I would reply asking if he was calling out. Still no answer but will come after missing work saying how much he need this job and has a baby on the way (still in high school). Last straw was leaving mid shift, without a word and while attending the front, because he had a show to prepare for. Waited till he showed up again to let him know we didn’t need him anymore and he nearly cried, begging us for a second chance.
Tl;DR – kid with unlimited call outs refused to call out, even when asked directly if he needed to call out. Surprised when he has fired and after missing nearly a third of his shifts.”
A Face Full Of Drink
“Every day at lunch, she would drink roughly half of her Jimmy Johns (or whatever) soda, then take it with her to the bathroom to fill it back up with some Jim Beam. She did a pretty good job covering up the smell, and since she did it from day 1 it wasn’t immediately obvious that she was getting wasted.
Found out on day 4 when she knocked her full cup over and we all got punched with the smell of Jim Beam in the afternoon.”
The Perfect Pitch
“Back in my days working at a used car dealership, we had a teen come in and test drive a 1,500 (mile) Corvette, todays equivalent would be the ZR1.
Anyway, the kid drives it around our set loop once, and is being a little waffley on if he wants to get it or not, he says it doesn’t really drive as well as he thought it would.
My salesman told him it was user error, and he’d prove it to him, they went out for another loop around, with the employee driving it.
He managed to get pulled over doing 135 (MPH) in a school zone, got arrested if I recall correctly. Needless to say, he was not welcome back at our store, however the teen did buy the car.”
A Bagel Sized Fit
“Boss had to fire a lady in our office because she lost her “marbles” when someone ate her bagel from the fridge. She literally had a tantrum, like a toddler. Also, the girl who ate it, ate it by mistake. She thought it was a bagel from the office breakfast we had earlier that same morning (it was in the same packaging as the office stuff). Now, I absolutely hate it when people eat my lunch, but the girl who ate the bagel profusely apologized. Even stated she would go and buy her a new one right on the spot. But tantrum lady couldn’t let it go. So, that ended up being her last night.”
Shots, Shots, Fired?
“Managed a long term care facility. Got a call one night from a resident telling me that the new night time worker was acting weird. This was about midnight and the shift started at 11. I called my lead (there were 3 people on duty). And asked how the night was going. She told me that “yea ‘Sally’ was sick”. Hmmmm. I put on my shoes and headed in. Now having the administrator show up at almost 1 am is never a good thing so I’m pretty sure all three of them felt scared when I showed up. I took one look at ‘Sally’ leaning against the wall, and asked her to come into my office. I asked her if she had been drinking. “I never drink at work” she slurred at me. I told her I had to have her blow into this tube. We had breathalyzer tubes that registered if they were over a specific level. The crystals changed from clear to dark blue if the BAC registered over the legal limit. No surprise. Turned dark blue. I asked her again if she had been drinking. She admitted to have been drinking earlier in the evening. She and her friend had been doing shots up until about 10pm. ” but I’m not wasted! I stopped and ate almost 2 hours ago so it’s all out of my system”. Nope. Doesn’t work that way. “Sorry Sally, but I need to let you go. Call someone to come get you”. I told her as I was filling out paperwork for the breathalyzer usage and final check request. ” Oh that’s ok I drove in”. Nope nope nope. She then asked what time she should come in tomorrow.
“Sally, you no longer work here. Coming to work wasted is not tolerated”. Oh. Really? Yes. Really. Please call someone, who has not been drinking, to come get you.
She called about 16 hours later asking me for her next week schedule. She didn’t remember being at work and getting fired.”
It’s Never Ending
“Hired a girl to work in a bagel store, who on her first day told me she couldn’t touch any of the meats because she was vegan.
Had another guy show up for work his first day, was doing just fine, seemed to be good with the job. I went to the office to get some paperwork for him to fill out, and he was just gone. Never came back, didn’t steal anything, no explanation at all.
The bad one was had to fire a girl for not showing up for several days in a row, saw in a newspaper the next week that she had been in jail the whole time because she had locked her kids in a closet while she was buying coke.”
Changing Procedures
“We kept finding stock discrepancies, we couldn’t figure out for a while what was happening. The count on certain items was out (system said we had stuff that wasn’t on the shelf). Eventually found that when a customer bought something with cash, later that same day the same cashier would refund the transaction for cash with no customer around.
They were fired on the spot – but couldn’t be charged criminally because the way the camera sat they’d been able to block the view of the cash drawer with their body and you couldn’t actually see them take the money out of the till. Even though we knew exactly when the false transactions were posted, footage placed them right there doing ‘something’ and intentionally blocking the view at that exact time, there’s only one way everything added up but they still got away with it.
If they’d just been pulling cash out we would have caught it right away, but the counts were never out because there was a transaction in the system, so they’d been doing this occasionally for a couple months, we figured they’d gotten away with a couple grand.
Return procedures changed after that.”
A Call Center Nightmare
“My manager had to fire someone for doing coke in the toilets and then trying to gouge his own eyes out. I guess thats what working at a call centre can do to someone.”