No one ever said they had a "satisfying" story about losing their job. However, some people have a funny or simply bizarre story about losing their job. Others, on the other hand, are completely heartbreaking and infuriating.
The most strange and hilarious reasons for termination that anyone can imagine, or could not begin to imagine, these people experienced. As originally shared to Reddit, these are stories of people who were fired on the spot and why. Content has been edited for clarity
The Wrong Person Was In Charge Of Scheduling
“I was a lifeguard at a subdivision pool when I was 15, I think. Being the ‘new guy’ and the ‘young kid,’ I worked every weekend – Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday day. I had already missed going to my grandparents’ a couple of times and my parents were taking a vacation. I asked off and was told that I couldn’t go. My dad basically said, ‘You are going, I don’t care.’
I told this to my boss, a bored housewife hired by the HOA to schedule the lifeguards who were mostly high school kids, and she said I still had to work. I left with my parents. When I got back, there were a dozen messages on my parents’ answering machine saying that they could not open the pool because I wasn’t there. She fired me three or four times that weekend.
She fired another lifeguard for wearing a bikini. They didn’t use her the next year, but, by that point in time, I was 16 and had a better job.”
He Was The Victim Of A Pre-Meditated Attack
“My boss set me up to be fired with an email he knew I would react badly to. When I reacted badly, he fired me on the spot. The joke was on him. I took the other two guys in my department with me and our company suddenly had no tech support.
I was supposed to be going on an international trip the following week. Since we were all gone, it had to be delayed indefinitely, which ended up costing the company the order, worth about $3 million, because he didn’t like that I didn’t want to travel 150 days a year on a 5% travel contract. Karma hurts.”
Keep Making Calls Or Go See Grandma?
“I worked at a call center. It was my grandmother’s birthday. We didn’t hit our sales quota for the day. The boss told me I had to stay until we hit it. I told him family was more important. I got fired immediately.
Best decision ever.”
Calling In Sick Should Never Be This Complicated
“I came back to my summer job at an amusement park after missing three days due to a strep throat. I handed in my doctor’s excuse and was fired for missing work.
Apparently, to call off, you couldn’t just talk to a manager. You had to talk to the department head, a person I had never met, with a phone number that had never been made available to me. Because I missed more than two days, it did not matter that I had a note because I was considered a no call/no show. The assistant manager I gave my excuse to handed me a letter back that said I had 10 minutes to clean out my locker and vacate the premises or they would call the cops for trespassing.
I was 16, in a state with very liberal employment laws, and my mom retained a lawyer. I did not win any money, but they ended up having to list me as rehire-able in their system. They paid a huge fine for essentially making it impossible for employees to call in sick.”
The Whole Experience Turned Him Off Chicken
“I was working in a chicken processing plant in Georgia, in the freezer section. We rotated through four tasks in this area – making boxes, packing boxes, labeling boxes, and stacking boxes. I had no problem with this. It was easy, if not boring, work.
What I did have a problem with was labeling the boxes. We had to stand in such a way that I was slightly bent at the waist the entire time. For some reason, this was causing a nerve to get pinched in my back. I was in tons of pain.
I toughed it out for two weeks, but after that I couldn’t take it anymore. I explained this to my boss. I told her that I would gladly do a double on packing the chicken (everyone hated that part) if I could just not label the boxes anymore. Or, I would take a double making boxes or stacking boxes. Either way, didn’t matter to me.
Instead, I was fired and told to vacate the property. They wouldn’t even let me sit in the visitor area until my ride arrived. I ended up spending 30 minutes standing in 27-degree weather on the side of the road waiting on my ride. Additionally, firing me in such a way was illegal, but I could not draw unemployment because I had only worked there for two weeks and, officially, I was fired for ‘refusing to perform assigned duties.’
I’m a security guard now. The pay isn’t as good, but a lot less stressful. Plus, I no longer eat chicken. Especially not fast food chicken, not after what I saw in that place. The bathrooms were so filthy they made me gag. For reference, I have worked in raw sewage without an issue, so it has to be bad to make me gag. There was chicken shoveled off the floor and put back on the conveyor system. Rotting bits of chicken stuck to machinery. The only thing between a person’s clothing and the chicken is a piece of plastic thinner than office 1-ply tissue.
If you’re in the southern states, do not eat fast food chicken.”
“They All Deserved It”
“There have been three people fired where I work and they all deserved it.
Person Number 1 was caught hiding in the trash can area texting. The owners are cool and gave him many more chances. This guy continued, for two weeks, to hide in the dumpster area on his phone. They called me up and replayed the footage (they have cameras everywhere) and told me they would have to let him go.
Person Number 2 started telling everyone that she was our supervisor. I was so confused, thinking maybe the owners told her something in private? She got into a huge argument with one of the owners about how to run things and told him to stay in his lane.
What the heck?
At the end of the day, she said she was going to quit because she was not being respected. The owner talked with me and asked who told her she was a manager? He was going to talk with her, but she never came back.
Number 3, who was hired by the time I was promoted manager, was the laziest person I have ever met. After working 15 minutes, she would complain that she need a break. If I wouldn’t give it to her, she would hide in the bathrooms for 30-40 minutes. She constantly complained about not getting promoted even though she just started two weeks prior. She gossiped about other coworkers constantly, refused to listen to me when I or the owners asked her to do tasks, and would get upset when asked to do anything and would just cross her arms, angrily standing there.
The last straw was when one of the owners caught her on camera trying to get me in trouble. She turned off one of the tanks, causing an error in the system. Later, she went to the owners claiming I turned off a tank and went off about how that is irresponsible for someone in a leadership position to do. Her first day, she told me she wanted my job because I ‘didn’t do anything special.’ It was the weirdest Day 1 conversation).
They rewatched the footage of her walking right up to the tank and turning it off. Thank god for cameras. Oh, happy day when she got fired.”
What A Jokester Their Boss Was… Or Was He?
“My friend and I were two young Irish lads working on rebuilding the Canary Wharf tower in London, which had been blown up by some other Irish lads a year earlier, but that’s another story. It was like the Nakatomi Plaza (the building from Die Hard). There were so many floors. If you didn’t feel like working, you could just go to some random floor and hide out for a while.
My friend and I, both 18 years old, were hungover one morning. We went to the 23rd floor where there was a comfortable couch. We laid there smoking weed. Suddenly, the English foreman appeared and fired us on the spot.
‘That was taking the pee, lads,’ he said as he was walking away.
Unfortunately, there was somewhat of a misunderstanding there. What he meant was that our behavior was so bad we had crossed a line. However, in Ireland at that time, ‘That was taking the pee,’ meant, ‘I’m only joking.’ So, we continued working for another three or four hours before he came back.
‘I fired you this morning,’ he snapped at us. ‘What the heck are you still doing here?’
I have to be honest, I did kind of have a feeling we were fired but my friend insisted we weren’t and I was stoned, so just went with it.”
It’s A Dirty Job And She Was Not Going To Do It
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“I was 16 and working as a dishwasher at a summer tennis camp at an exclusive tennis club. The owner of the club was upset that I had not taken all the trash out. I explained to him that the dumpster was full and overflowing.
He told me that I needed to climb into the dumpster and jump up and down on the trash to create more room in it. I said that I wouldn’t do it. He told me that he wouldn’t ask me to do anything that he wouldn’t do himself.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I want to see you climb into the dumpster and start jumping up and down.’
He fired me on the spot.”
Why Was He Hired In The First Place?
“I was fresh out of college at an IT contract-to-hire job. I came in on a Tuesday and sat down at my desk. The owner came up behind me and told me I was fired. I sat there, mouth open.
‘Why?’ I asked.
He said that I was not a good fit for the company and that I had to leave. To make matters worse, my wife and I had just had a baby at that time. I gathered my things as he stood there watching me (probably making sure I did not steal anything), and walked me out of the office.
I found out later that, because of the size of the company at the time, they were looking for a tier III worker, but I was a tier I. I told them this in the interview, but apparently they did not have the resources to train me.
The joke was on them. I went through a month of unemployment and found an even better IT job where I make a lot of money and work only half as hard as that job.”
“This Was One Job I Didn’t Regret Getting Fired From.”
“I had been working as a contractor for the Army Corps of Engineers for a number of years, traveling 100% of the time to all of my projects. I had been looking for something that would have me be closer to home and sent out my resume to a couple of agencies and companies. I finally got a hit on one of them and scored an interview position for an IT specialist for the TSA.
The interview went well. I was informed that I would be more of a project manager than an actual IT technician and that I would be the sole person with IT skills in my state for all the regional and international airports. I was OK with the change, as it was a higher pay and better chance to learn new skills. I started the position in January of that year and started making myself at home and got my name out to the personnel at the location I was working at.
The Deputy Director of Security seemed to think that, since my office reported to him, that I was the dedicated IT box monkey for his site. It did not matter how many times I asked to have him, as well as all those who worked in his office, to call in tickets to the help desk. They would constantly call my personal AND work cell phones to have me come and fix whatever mundane issue at the time.
The main reason why the Deputy Director had them call me was because he told them to. The reason he felt that was a good direction to go was that he didn’t feel like they had the time to deal with the help desk.
By month four, I was extremely stressed out from working there. I got stressed going to work and I stayed stressed when I got home. Sometime during the month of April, I had discussed with my wife that I was thinking of leaving the position. The stress and disrespect were not worth it. I sent an email to my previous employer and filled him in on what was going on. He immediately offered my old position back to me and we agreed upon me starting back up with him that coming June.
When I walked into my office on May 2, Mr. Deputy Director entered my office about 30 minutes later. Already dreading to see him there, I was just waiting for whatever trash-bag problem he was going to unload on me that day. Instead, he asked a different question.
‘You don’t like working here very much, do you?’ he asked.
Just slightly taken aback by the question, I responded that working for him has been downright stressful. He pursed his lips and, I think, he said, ‘Interesting,’ before he ordered me to pack my stuff up and turn in my access cards.
I had already been in the process of removing my personal effects to get ready for my previous job, so I didn’t have much to take with me. I locked my computer, gave him my access cards, and put my company issued iPhone on the desk, locked. He walked me out of the building and I think he wished me good luck, but I didn’t care. I was free!
Or so I thought. I ended up getting emails and phone calls from them asking for the PIN to my company-issued iPhone. The first time they asked me, I asked what was in it for me.
‘Nothing, really,’ they replied.
‘Then you can see how much I want to assist you in this pointless venture right now,’ I replied.
That went on for two weeks before I told them that I would file harassment charges if they continued to call me on this. I took the rest of the month of May off to relax, wind down, and reconnect with my wife and kids before I went back to traveling full time again. Sure, I was traveling, but at least my family and I were happy again.
This was one job I didn’t regret getting fired from.”
Their Boss Had A Strange Aversion To Tennis Player Andre Agassi
“I worked at a camera store many years ago. We received a life-size cutout of Andre Agassi (the tennis player) who was promoting Canon cameras. We set up the cutout in the store, but our crotchety owner came in, didn’t like it, and told us to throw it out.
We put it away, but when the owner went out for lunch, we took it back out and took a few goofy pictures in front of it. Then, we put it back away. When the owner came back from lunch, he returned to his office. Five minutes later, he came rushing down the stairs red-faced and screaming. We had forgotten about the security camera and his secretary had snitched on us.
‘I told you to throw that thing out!’ he screamed.
He then went into the back room, dragged Andre out, and started trying to tear the thing apart, bending the head back and forth. That, cardboard is pretty tough though, and he was not strong guy. He just stood there for 30 seconds furiously struggling with it.
We were all trying to hold it in, but one of my co-workers couldn’t help it and started laughing at the absurdity. Our owner heard it, whipped around, and screamed, ‘You’re fired! Get out of my store immediately.’
We were all shocked. The guy picked up his jacket and walked out, never to be seen again.”
Her Firing Was So Abrupt, It Shook Her
“Ironically, I was having a really positive day at work. I had been there for about nine months and was starting to really hit my stride. I had made some really positive improvements to the production process and workflow. The company was better for my time there. My work actually resulted in them being able to eliminate an entire position, saving the company $20-30k per year.
Around 3 pm, I was called into our small conference room and told that I was being fired for saying that I ‘hate this freaking job’ and that I wasn’t willing to go back into the warehouse and help out in the mornings. I was so completely caught off guard. Given the fact that this was coming from the owner, I knew there was nothing I could say. Still, I defended myself by saying there was no way I would say that I hated my job. Still I was guided to my desk where I packed up my stuff in shock and headed out.
I remained in contact with one of my coworkers. About a year later, it came out that the same thing was tried on her. It turned out that the operations manager was just a nut. Having the ear of the owners, she would straight up lie to them to get people fired. Why? I still don’t know, but they knew this second coworker much longer and better than myself. When the OM told them what my former coworker supposedly was doing, they talked to her directly and determined that she was lying. She got canned this time instead. There are days I still wish they would have the balls to reach out to me and apologize. It has been five years now though, so that won’t be happening.
That experience really shook me and I can still see the effects to this day. That was my first real job out of college. I had decorated my little office with personal items, some drawings my daughter had done, etc. Now, I refuse to decorate with anything personal and I keep the bare minimum of personal articles in my office. Getting canned and having to stand there and be watched while I had to collect up all of these personal artifacts was embarrassing and humiliating. I don’t plan on being fired again, but if need be, I can grab one or two things tops and walk to my car.”
He Was Their Glorified Errand Boy
“Almost a decade ago, I was in my apprenticeship to become an electrical planner. I’m Swiss. Over here, your first apprenticeship is very important. It’s hard to get any job at all if you don’t have at least one apprenticeship done. As a result, there was big pressure in my last year of school to get a place. Initially, I wanted to be a computer technician, but I just could not land a hit. I had to start looking into other jobs. Eventually, I landed a job as an aforementioned electrical planner.
Not to mince words, but not only did I hate the actual work right away, I also hated my boss and most of my coworkers. Initially, I just thought I would soldier my way through. Finishing your first apprenticeship is important. I managed a little more than a year, before I started to get depressed to the point at which my parents were starting to notice and my mother got on my case.
I started missing work. I had a doctor who was very liberal in handing out a sick-notice for one to two weeks straight. I would work for a month or so, miss around 10 days of work, and then work for another month or so. My grades started to drop and I actually started to give my boss and coworkers lip for being so mean to me.
For context, I was a glorified maid. Every morning, I had to do take a 20 minute trip to the local bakery and get everybody their foodstuffs for the break. I frequently got abuse if the stuff they wanted was already sold out.
‘Why didn’t you leave earlier?’ Because I’m already leaving almost an hour before the break actually starts, and then other people start complaining the stuff isn’t warm anymore.
Then, twice a day, I had to make coffee for everybody. They would frequently change their mind on the order and then berate me for messing stuff up. Often, they would complain even if I did exactly as they asked.
‘You put too much sugar in.’ No, you just can’t properly decide on how much you want. You asked for three, I put in three.
The most offensive thing was that I just couldn’t do anything right. I was an apprentice. I earned maybe 1/10 of what the others made. Part of that deal was that you were allowed to mess up and then taught how to do it properly. No such luck. I was basically required to learn everything by myself or google it. Then I would get 60-minute sessions of beratement for ‘not doing the work properly.’
The final straw was on a Friday. I had to leave around 4 pm at the latest so I could catch my train home. I started cleaning everything around 3 pm. Five minutes before I planned to leave, just as I finished cleaning the office-floor, one of the workers walked in wearing muddy, snowy shoes, ruining the entire floor again. I packed my stuff. The boss came in and demanded I stay to clean up. I don’t remember my exact words, but it was said very loudly and would probably get me banned from most places online if I put it to the screen.
When I came back on Monday, the boss told me to get out immediately. I remember laughing the whole way home. I was free. It was probably one of the best days of my teenaged-life. The joke was on him anyway. I still had a bunch of stuff I was supposed to bring to the post office in my backpack. I held onto it for a few weeks in case they would ask for it, then ritually burnt it in the hopes of some Elder God smiting the Office. That did not happen, but it was satisfying nonetheless.”
Tales From The Other Side Of The Firing
“I once fired a person for disappearing on their first day of work for a couple of hours. That person was certainly one of a kind. We worked in a manufacturing plant. He took off to try to find some cute girl he knew that worked there. The guy was married.
‘What am I supposed to tell my wife?’ he asked after I broke the news to him.
I replied, ‘Probably not the truth.’
I also fired someone who had relations on my desk, even though that was not the reason I fired her.
I also fired someone who could never find a ride to work. He was arrested for stealing a car within a week of his termination. He was also apparently good at chemistry (making crystal) and had a strong will to live, because he was shot and left in a ditch to die (but survived). The person who took his place worked out for about three months until he called me to tell me he couldn’t come to work for a few months because he would be ‘serving a dime.’
It was a fun year!”