It's unbelievable how stupid employees can be, and these are some of the dumbest around. Bosses have to patient and firm with these idiots.
(Content edited for clarity.)
Rock N’ Roll
“I had an employee play sick for two weeks, sending us daily emails to update us on his condition. At the same time, his band was posting photos on Facebook of their road trip to the South By Southwest Music Festival.”
They Hide The Superstars Behind The Grill
“A guy almost twice my age put his hand flat on a grill to see if it was hot enough. It was hot enough. He got major burns on his hand then tried to sue McDonald’s because there were no warnings not to put your hand on a grill. He lost.”
Filthy People
“I was a trainer for customer service. I had a woman in one of my classes who wore a wig that was moldy and smelled heavily of urine and smoke.
When I was a manager at the same call center, I had a guy who wore adult diapers. The worst part was that he didn’t bring any extras so halfway through the work day he would just smell like urine.
I also had a woman whose manager wouldn’t let her take like her sixth break of the day, so to get even, she crapped her pants. just sitting there taking calls and she cut a turd. The thing rolled out of her pants leg. freaking horrifying.”
This Dummy
“I worked as a supervisor for a catering company when I was in college.
We had this guy who might have been the dumbest person I have ever met.
I remember we had to label dishes the cooks sent out to know what went where without uncovering them. I asked him to tag a breakfast, and he misspelled every word… even the word ‘eggs.’
The worst, however, is late one night we were cleaning up and I asked him to mop the kitchen before we locked up. I was in the office doing paperwork, and a horrible acrid smell started filling the kitchen area.
I told everyone to get out and started looking for the source. This idiot decided to mop the floor with bleach and ammonia. I kicked the bucket into the drain and went outside, coughed for 45 minutes and ended up in the ER.
The owner of the company was desperate, and she refused to fire him, so I gave my two weeks.
A few months later the guy t-boned another driver with a catering truck trying to run a red light at an intersection; the resulting lawsuit ended up shutting the business down.”
Call Center Thieves
“I was a call center supervisor…
I had to fire people for various reasons. Among them are the following:
- One of my team members was looking at hardcore smut at his workstation, leaned over to the woman sitting directly next to him, turned his monitor towards her and asked if she thought her chest was real.
- Another agent had a customer send a payment directly to him. At his home address!
- One agent stole a customers American Express black card number and proceeded to ring up a total of $250,000 worth of charges in two days time
- One of my team members ran a scam for six months. Each day she would write down a customers credit card number. She would then use it to buy lunch for herself and her friends each day and have her friends just give her cash. (She would order the food to be delivered to the office and pay over the phone). She would have gotten away with it too. However, she turned 21 two weeks before being re-deployed. For her 21st birthday, she rented the ‘Pittsburgh party bus’ which is a bus limo with a fully stocked bar, and they drive you around to all the different clubs with admission already paid. There were 15 people on the bus at $100 a person. She wasn’t paid enough for something like that.”
Not How Security Is Supposed To Work
“I’m a security supervisor. I came in one morning, and found the nightshift guard asleep, with an empty hard cider bottle beside him.
I walked around him, set up my computer, filled in the paperwork to get him off-site, called control, waited an hour for the company to send a rep down, drank a coffee, all without this idiot doing more than snoring or farting.
When he was cleaning out his locker after getting canned, a whole bunch of empties fell out. He hadn’t even had the sense to toss them.
There was another guy we dealt with, in the same place, where a checkbook went missing from the client’s desk. I saw him out during his shift one day (which in itself was a no-no) in a check cashing place in town. I went over to say hi, and he tried to clock me when he spotted me coming. He had been using the client’s checkbook to supplement his wages.”
Not A Criminal Mastermind
“I once had an employee who was seemingly a reformed convict but ended up later robbing a bank and tried to take the money north into Canada (We are in Colorado). He took two of our employees with him, and they were caught about halfway through Wyoming.
It ended up being funny because he signed his real name on the bank’s Welcome booklet before he proceeded to rob them.”
The Constantly Sick One
“My sister has a coworker who constantly calls out of work. My sister works at a small gas station/quick mart. When she works, there is usually only one person on staff for a shift. One time, her coworker called out because of a ‘doctor appointment’ on a Friday at 4 p.m., then was seen at a bar at that exact time by a regular customer. If you’re going to call out sick, at least stay home or go somewhere far away from where no one you know will see you. It sucks for my sister because she’ll work from 5 a.m. to noon, then find out the lady called out, so she then has to go back to work from 4 to 10 p.m. She rarely sees her daughter because of this, and her boss refuses to replace this lady.”
Can’t Even Deliver Pizza
“I worked at a pizza joint with this dude who was clueless. We hired him on as a driver, for two weeks he would constantly get lost, come back to check the map and drive around for another hour. The last straw was when he hit a parked car in front of a cop and just drove right back to the store.”
Nice Partner!
“This wasn’t an employee; it was a business partner. We had started a consumer credit counseling business together. He had experience managing one as an employee. I had just gotten out of another successful business. Part of that was that I had a few large lines of credit with several electronics retailers/wholesalers. So I took $50,000 out to purchase all the equipment we needed to get 20 workstations, a server system and the software we needed, the phone lines and a lot of other stuff.
So we were going at it, and things were going well. I was away for a long weekend. I check my phone and have a bunch of messages on it. It’s before lunch, so I figure I’ll head in, find out what the problem is. I walk onto the floor, and the doors are wide open. I walk in, and there is nothing. Absolutely nothing. All that was left were the desks and cubies and the cat5 wire I had installed. All the phone equipment, the computers, the chairs, even the floor mats for the chairs. Heck, my desk was gone.
The security cameras for the building showed him and a few skeezy friends of his loading everything into a Ryder truck. I never heard from him again. It set me back for a long time, but it worked out. That’s the worst employee I have ever had.”
Nacho Cheese And Twinkies Are Not Healthy
“I had a lady who smelled like a hamster cage. Like, the sawdust stuff you put at the bottom. She changed my whole perspective on humankind. She was large, breathed heavy, and complained about everything.
She would show up late; when she didn’t call in sick, she would show up with her lunch in hand. Her lunch consisted of multiple packages of Twinkies and a nacho platter from 7-11. But she wouldn’t settle for the small section normally reserved to fill with the cheese. Nope, she would remove the lid and fill the entire lid with nacho cheese. Then come in, the bag of Twinkies under her arm, lid of cheese in one hand, chips in the other. Remember she’s late but still had time to stop for this crap.
Once at work, she would smoke every 30 minutes, then come back inside and complain about how terrible she felt. Of course, you feel like crap! Nacho cheese and nicotine are not going to help. This was every day, seriously every day.
Finally, she stopped showing up. No warning, no calls, nothing. I fired her as a no-show with no notice filed under job abandonment and guess what…. she is probably still collecting unemployment.”
Dumb And Lazy
“A girl came in as a waitress. She would take food out of the window because she thought it was hers and wouldn’t bother to wait for the whole order to be finished to check that it is indeed hers. She would take it out to her table and realize it wasn’t her order, chuck it and ask for new stuff because ‘the cooks messed it up.’ One time, she asked for change for $100. She received $100 in smaller bills to make change for her table. Instead of counting it out, she handed the entire $100 back to the woman, who left with it all. The girl was $80 short at the end of the night. Normally it would come out of her pay, but our boss covered that night and asked her to pay her back. Weeks go by, and she still had not paid our boss back. My boss got persistent about it, and so the girl went and talked to her mom about it. She came back and said, ‘My mom says we all make mistakes and I shouldn’t have to pay for my mistakes.’ Eventually, it resulted in the girl suing our boss for $80 that ‘our boss scammed out of her.’ And then she had a meltdown about working 12 hours a week stating that it was too much for her and why doesn’t anyone understand? I’m not going to lie; I celebrated when she quit.”
Not The Saltiest Pretzel In The Bag
“Back when I was a manager at a Pretzel place we noticed when we had this girl on the register that the drawer would always come up short so we were watching her. We were between paychecks at the time, and she had mentioned she was broke. She went on break as we were counting the drawer and we discovered we were $125 short. She came back with new shoes and was talking about how cute they looked, and we asked her ‘How much were your shoes…about $125?’ I will always remember her shocked genuine look of surprise as she said. ‘How did you know?'”
Side Hustle
“I had my own business, and the highest ranking manager kind of went through a hard time with his lady. He lived about a block away, and with us being so small in size, everyone knew everyone, so when things got rocky for him, I let him live in his office while he and his wife worked through their issues.
I lived on the other side of town, so one night I was there a bit late. I decided I was too tired to drive safely and slept on my couch in my office. About halfway through the night, I wanted to make a sandwich. The manager didn’t know that I was there.
The offices, except mine, all had a wall of glass, so you could see in them while walking by. There he was, getting ‘satisfied’ by perhaps the biggest street walker I’ve ever seen.
He’d become a hustler, and he was breaking in the new girl.
This is why small businesses fail in the first three years.”
Heavyweight Champion Of The Shipping Department
“A few years back I made some changes to our employee manual, so I put a couple of copies in the break room for everyone to read if they wanted. The next day, one guy from the shipping department (who had worked there for over 10 years) walked into the main office and punched another guy who he had been having a little feud with for years right in the side of the face. Caught him totally off guard, knocked him out of his chair and on to the floor. The shipping department guy then walks out of the office and goes back to his job like nothing happened. Police were called, gave him a citation, and I told him to grab everything, and he was done. He got all upset because he had been reading the new employee manual and one part had said if there were a problem with an employee they would be verbally reprimanded, then suspended from work, and if it continues they would be fired. He assumed he could punch the other guy in the face twice without being fired.”
The Annoying Electrician
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“I’m an electrician – and a woman (this is important). When I was a second-year apprentice my foreman came to me with a brand new, wet behind the ears, a first-year apprentice in tow (in residential it isn’t uncommon to have second-year apprentices run crews of first-year apprentices). He introduced us and told the kid that he would be helping me. As soon as the boss left he looked me right in the eyes and told me ‘I don’t have to do what you say. You’re a woman; you don’t belong in construction. You don’t even know what you’re doing.’
His other gems were ‘I’m going to marry my girlfriend. She is the perfect woman – blond, big chest and dumber than a bag of rocks.’ When I informed him that this meant he would have dumb kids, he replied ‘Nuh uh. Kids are like 70 percent their father, so they would take after me.’ I didn’t have the heart to inform him that any offspring of his was doomed.
I didn’t have the power to terminate or discipline him in any way, so I got my revenge in other ways. He was maybe 5-foot-2-inches after a long stretching session, so I always made him do the overhead work. He once told me he didn’t want to put up the lights in a garage. I told him that part of being an electrician was doing things you didn’t want to do. He replied with ‘Part of being an electrician is having an apprentice to do the things you don’t want to do.’
‘YOU are that apprentice.'”
The Last Straw
“I worked at a small family style breakfast restaurant. I wasn’t the newest employee, but I was the most regular one on Sundays, so I became the assistant manager (I was 16). I was also the only waiter. One employee had a meltdown because five minutes before closing a couple walked in and ordered. I told her they wouldn’t be long and worst case we get time and a half. While trying to calm her down, three more tables walked in. I seated them took their order when she found out, to keep her calm, I said just make their toast. Next thing I know she comes out from the kitchen flinging toast at the customers like throwing stars and then goes back into the kitchen breaks a few things and leaves.”
Best Brain Surgeon Ever!
“I had this wacko who worked for me at a company that rhymes with Blows and is a home improvement warehouse. She told everyone in the store that she had a brain tumor and was going to have emergency surgery for it on a Saturday.
The following Monday she strolls in back to work. We were expecting her to be out for a rather long time. We had arranged for flowers and get well cards and had her shifts covered for the week.
We ask her if she had surgery. ‘Oh yeah. They removed the tumor.’ Did I mention that she had all of her hair? No? Oh, well SHE HAD ALL OF HER HAIR! Not to mention she came into work. To describe her lying as pathological is doing the word an injustice.”
Just Your Average Incognito Racecar Driver With Duck Feet
I used to be a manager at an office supply store. We had an associate who used to act eccentrically.
For starters, he claimed he had ‘duck feet’ and could not walk around the entire store for his shift unless we allowed him to do it barefoot. That was a no-go, so he demanded extra breaks to relieve his ‘duck foot.’
Other times he would show up when it wasn’t even his shift, but he would be wearing full-on crotch rocket motorcycle gear, including the helmet. He would then proceed to walk around the store with said gear on and attempt to hit on the female associates. When I confronted him about it, he tried to pretend at first that he wasn’t an associate there. With more prodding, I got him to admit it was him finally. He responded that he was ‘incognito.’
Lastly, because we were required to use radio headsets to communicate to each other, we had a certain protocol about what could be said on the radio, which he promptly ignored. He had a habit of naming different areas of the store. He called the women’s bathroom, “beaver’s nest.” He would refer to the break room as ‘Hangout time.’ And also, he called the checkout area, ‘change city.’
Yeah, it was entertaining firing him.
Wasting No Time
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“I was only a team leader, so I didn’t do the firing here, but back when I worked at an amusement park a 16-year-old was hired to work the cash register in my department. On his FIRST DAY, he stole $20 out of the till in full view of another employee (and cameras) and told her to “just be cool.”
She told our manager and the kid was fired on the spot.”
A Terrible Bully
“A female employee started dating my best employee. Then she started beating him. Of course, he told nobody because of the stigma of being an abused man. I didn’t find out till his friend showed up one day and started yelling at her when they were both on shift. I lost my best employee because he quit and had a nervous breakdown. I still worry and hope he’s ok. I fired the girl on the spot, and she didn’t understand why she was getting sacked (the story was backed up by multiple other individuals who finally came forward before anyone asks). Afterward, it came out that she was also secretly bullying another employee to the point that she had become suicidal.
This one messed me up too because I felt like I’d failed as a supervisor. I had asked about his bruises, but he always had an excuse (wiped out on his bike, weekend DIY project). As someone who’d been in an abusive relationship myself, I felt even more guilty for not seeing signs.”
Profane Conversations
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“I used to manage a coffee shop when I was younger.
After the morning rush, I would head into the office and work on scheduling, pay, ordering, etc. It was a small shop so there would only be one other employee manning the counter, he/she would call me if they needed help or a break.
Well, one morning my boss calls me on my cellphone, says he’s been trying to get a hold of our location for the past twenty minutes. I peek my head out the door and see a few people waiting in line and my employee on the shop phone.
After I get her off the phone and we help the customers, one lady, a regular, pulls me aside and says that my employee had been talking on the phone, with her friend, about the pleasure she gave her boyfriend the night before.
I sent her home and put in the paperwork to have her fired. Her defense? ‘That woman shouldn’t have been eavesdropping on my conversation.'”