Frustrated Managers Share The Craziest Reason They’ve Had To Fire An Employee

People do the dumbest things sometimes and sometimes those dumb things can get them fired. These managers and bosses are spilling the details on the stupidest things their employees did that got them fired.

Some People Misuse Their Time On The Clock In The Worst Ways

1) “A friend of mine is a firefighter and his colleague got fired for making ‘special’ cookies and feeding them to his workmates on shift, without telling them about the extra ingredient he’d added. They actually had to attend a house fire that night and were super paranoid that they hadn’t put it out properly. Lots of water was wasted that evening.” —

2) “One of the lifeguards was really hungover so he took a crap in the pool so we didn’t have to open up for the day.” —

3) “My mom once had to fire this one guy. He kept making inappropriate comments about a coworker. He was given warnings. So, he switched to doing it in Spanish. The girl was from Mexico, she spoke Spanish. He got fired.” —

4) “I had to fire someone for stealing someone’s lunch from the break room. It was a security firm, and he was a security tech. EVERYTHING WAS UNDER CAMERA except the bathrooms. I fired him because he should have known that, not because he stole someone’s lunch.” —

5) “Our group had a mini team outing at a bowling place on a Thursday afternoon. I organized it because I was the manager. We bowled and afterward had a few brews. One guy decided to have brews and shots. Everyone there had to be at work the next day at 7 am. I told my employee to take it easy, but he just kept taking shots. I left and went home to sleep. I got to work the next day at 6:45 AM. At 8:30, guess who called in sick? Yep. Fired.” —

6) “I used to manage a hotel. You would not believe the number of female employees I had to constantly remind it was against company policy to fool around with the guests. One woman (she was about 20-years-old), who I had to remind this of several times, was caught mid-act doing the horizontal hokey-pokey with a guy who was about 65 and looked like Santa Claus. After she was fired, one of her coworkers told me that this woman had a thing for Santa Claus and thought she’d never get the opportunity to act on it, so it was worth possibly getting caught and fired. The girl was pretty decent looking, too.” —

How Were These People Hired In The First Place?

7) “We had a lady that smelled like BO working front line hospitality. She was asked repeatedly to wear deodorant and wash her clothes. We let her go and she went aftter us for unfair dismissal. I can no longer say I haven’t signed a legal document claiming someone smelled so bad,” —

8) “This guy always tried to hide at work to avoid working. One day, I was looking for him and I stepped into the bathroom. I noticed a shoe print on the back of the toilet, and when I looked up, I saw one of the ceiling tiles was pushed a little to the side. I climbed up there, and this sucker was hiding in the ceiling.” —

9) “A friend of mine woke up on the floor of an apartment, hungover as all get out, too hungover to work. He called into work, told the manager he was too sick to come in. Manager innocently asked, ‘What are you sick with?’ Friend responded, ‘Cerebral palsy.’ Yeah, he got fired.” —

10) “I managed a small retail company in the mall and my assistant manager was my best friend. I was leaving on a Saturday afternoon and told him to train the new guy for the rest of the night. He then asked if he could leave early and watch his college team play. I promptly said no, because the new guy could not close by himself. I went home and someone from another store called me and told me that my best friend had mentioned that he was going to leave early. I drove back up to the mall and waited out by the back door. When he walked out to leave, I just held my hand out and said, ‘Give me your keys.'” —

11) “I managed a retail store and had to coach a salesman to stop referring to black women as ‘Weezy.’ After a long sit down talk and him signing a formal write-up, we made a little small talk to lighten the mood, and I asked him to go back out on the floor and help the lady waiting at the sales counter. He turned and looked then said, ‘It’s okay, it’s just a [n-word].’ I fired him on the spot and escorted him out the back door. About a month later, I had to attend an unemployment hearing when the guy actually had the guts to file a claim. He even brought his parents with him.” —

12) “IT guy caught this guy surfing some pretty unsavory websites at work. The IT guy warned him that it was against the rules and if the boss found out, they would fire him, stop doing that at work, etc. Basically, IT guy was doing him a solid by warning him that it was monitored and in the logs. So this idiot went to the boss and complained about the IT guy telling him not to watch those sorts of videos at work.” —

13) “My dad had to fire someone because, at the height of the anthrax scare, they decided it would be hilarious to sprinkle flour all over the coffee machine.” —

14) “A PC technician was being pestered with questions from a customer about sales stuff. He lost it and while looking the customer square in the face (the employee had his eyes closed and said, ‘GET AWAY FROM ME OR I’LL EAT YOUR FACE.’ It took half the day to get over the laughter and the weirdness of the situation before we could even begin on paperwork.” —

15) “My favorite event happened right after Christmas in 2012. The grooming salon needed some extra help washing dogs, so I hired a sweet, young red-headed girl we will call Lizzy. Now, the head groomer and her assistant were a pair of mean girls and decided they didn’t like Lizzy, so they came up with a plan to make Lizzy leave. Lizzy had just gotten a nice new purse for Christmas, so the head groomer and her assistant decided, ‘Hey, let’s ruin Lizzy’s purse!’ When Lizzy found what they did, she came running to me crying with the most awful smelling purse in the world. Thankfully, the groomer mean girls weren’t too smart and did it right in front of a camera. Lizzy and I both sat horrified as we watched it. When I was firing the two girls, they told me the whole process: They decided to collect dog feces, butt gland secretions, and old rotten Chinese food, mix it all in a baggie and let it ferment for a week. Then they poured it in the poor girl’s new bag. Both of these women were in their early 30s with children – Sigh.” —

16) “I saw someone get fired for coming to work dressed in a dog costume a day before Halloween. He refused to go back home to change. This was an office with a casual dress code, but the employee had a history of erratic behavior. He left with a sad doggy face and his tail between his legs.” —

This Sort Of Behavior Doesn’t Belong In The Workplace

17) “Had to fire a girl for sleeping with a client – at a homeless shelter.” —

18) “My dad had to fire someone who stole clothes and shoes from our store and wore them to work the next day.” —

19) “There was one time I had to fire someone because I sent him out on a job that was supposed to only take 2-3 hours to complete. Before he left, he mentioned to the receptionist that he was going to make it last all day. She mentioned it to me, and sure enough, he returned over eight hours later. Being dishonest with a client’s money is not something I was going to tolerate.” —

20) “A manager at my store stole a bag that a customer had left on the counter. He completely denied it and I believed him. But the customer was sure he’d left it there and asked to see the video. I hadn’t seen anything odd, so I showed it to the customer. He pointed out the bag, which we watched until the manager of 10+ years appeared on camera, took the bag, and left. Idiot.” —

21) “I had to fire this kid from a gas station I worked at after he asked me if I ever poked holes in rubbers with a push pin (as he proceeded to punch holes in said rubbers). I have no idea how long he was doing it for, he worked there for over a year.” —

22) “Manager at a delivery joint here, we had to let someone go because they decided to deliver pizzas in a stolen car.” —

23) “In high school, a guy I knew stole a giant Ronald McDonald made of legos from the McDonald’s he worked at. It was one of those ‘guess the number of lego pieces’ contests. He got away with it, but later on he was busted for stealing boxes of hash brown wrappers with monopoly game pieces on them. Cops showed up at his place to arrest him over the hash browns. Lo and behold, there was Ronald in the middle of his room.” —

24) “I once worked in a retail store where we all had our own access codes that allowed us to do stuff, and if our code didn’t allow us to do it, we weren’t supposed to be doing it. On his first day, during training, this guy managed to catch the General Manager’s code as he was typing it in and used it for about a week. Pretty much gave away thousands of dollars of equipment in the manager’s name. It was particularly stupid because he did it while he still had his trainee position, which required somebody to look over most of what he did if he wanted to give discounts, etc. If he had waited another couple of days, he would have been moved up to full staff member and could have given out most of those discounts anyway without anybody noticing or caring, but he just couldn’t wait to give his friends all the free swag.” —

25) “One of my salesmen had a customer stop during a test drive so he could buy some illegal substances. On the upside, he did offer to share it with them.” —

26) “At a 7-11, a sales associate’s landlord came in (she lived in the neighborhood) and told the associate that she was late on rent. The associate simply printed out a money order and handed it to the landlord.” —

When Stupidity Runs Rampant

27) “They forgot to put cheese on a cheese pizza. Twice.” —

28) “All of our lobsters kept dying off and it happened several times. We’re talking several thousands of dollars worth of lobsters gone, and this was even after cleaning the tank a couple of times in case there were some lobster hating germs in there. Turns outs, one of the overnight floor cleaners was staging gladiatorial lobster battles. Unfortunately, he forgot to wash his hands that were covered in floor cleaning chemicals, and that did not bode well for Spartacus and his armored brethren.” —

29) “I was managing a restaurant and I noticed a new hire had really good tip averages the day before when I had been paying her out. I did morning cash out where I checked all slips against the information in the computer. The next day, I was going through her slips and noticed a – discrepancy. Namely that she had added a one in front of each tip and changed the total. How could I tell you ask? SHE USED DIFFERENT COLOR INK! She was fired and we refunded the money, but seriously, at least use the same color ink.” —

30) “I worked in a fast food kiosk at an amusement park. We had a machine that cooked our burgers and toasted our buns, one of those ones where the food goes through on a conveyor belt. One day, it was raining. While walking to the kiosk, a girl got wet. So, logically, she took her clothes off and put them through the machine so the heat could dry them. Her shirt caught on fire and set the kitchen sprinklers off, then her shoe forced the two toasting plates in the bun section far apart, creating a large repair bill and her losing her job.” —

31) “My manager once fired a woman for sun tanning during lunch. She went out to her car, stripped to her underwear and laid on the hood/windshield to sunbathe. Anyone looking out could see her. She didn’t think she was doing anything wrong since she was on her lunch break.” —

32) “Couple of straight men got into a physical fight over a lesbian, on the floor, in front of customers. She was out, everyone knew she was gay. It started out as an argument over who she was friends with and turned into who was going to be going out with her in the future. That’s like idiots arguing over who’s gonna win the Nobel Prize.” —

33) “I had to fire an employee one time because he decided to crap all over the bathroom and write his name with a smiley face. Side note: There isn’t anything wrong with him mentally, he just thought it was funny.” —

34) “I was training her on our computer system and all she wanted to do was talk about the men in the office. When it was break time, she actually said, ‘I’m going up to the 4th floor and check out the meat up there.’ After break, I sent her into the fax room to pick up a fax and was told that while she waited for the fax, she perched her can on the edge of the table, arched her back, stuck her chest out, and fanned herself with some papers, all the while making suggestive comments to the mail room guy. She was sent home and told she didn’t need to come back.” —

When People Don’t Deserve The Job They Have

35) “I worked at a JC Penney. The store manager would come in really early to work and turn off the cameras. Then he would steal tons of stuff like purses, etc. He didn’t know that cameras also had an automatic on feature. They turned back on one day while he was still in the midst of his thieving and he got fired. It kinda makes me sad cause he was a really nice guy.” —

36) “When I worked at Disneyland, I had an employee steal an entire ream of blank fast pass tickets. There’s absolutely no need or reason to have these, it’s just blank card stock the size of a business card. I caught him in the act and several minutes later, he didn’t have a job.” —

37) “We had a guy get fired for peeing in a drain in a fresh produce storage area, and then two other guys got fired for breaking the hidden camera used to catch the guy peeing in the drain.” —

38) “We had a tattoo artist who wasn’t overly skilled and was a bit of a sleaze, but he mostly kept to himself while doing his own clients. One day, a customer came in complaining about a tattoo he did. It was three weeks after the tattoo and this thing looked more like a 3rd degree burn than a healing tattoo. When confronted about it, the artist just blew it off like he did nothing wrong. No remorse or empathy at all. Fired on the spot for being a jerk.” —

39) “He was driving a forklift while dressed in a suit of armor – made from cardboard boxes.” —

40) “He was jumping up and down on a clog in the trash compactor. Which is not only incredibly dangerous but just plain stupid, especially since you couldn’t see him from where the start button was. He could have been crushed to death at any time without anyone knowing it. It was one of the few offenses you could be immediately fired for.” —

They Found Out They Couldn’t Just Do Whatever They Wanted While On The Clock

41) “Fired someone after three days. On her second day on the job, my staff started complaining that this woman was rude. On the third day, she literally screamed at someone over using her stapler. And it was on Christmas Eve, too. I’m a cold-hearted son-of-a-shut your mouth.” —

42) “I had to fire a brand new employee on his second day on the job for backing out the maintenance truck. He neglected to close the wide-open passenger door and it got caught on the concrete security pillars. It bent back the door past 90 degrees out. Then the idiot attempted to drive forward as if nothing happened like he bumped into a curb. Several of our employees had to flag him down half way down the parking lot because he wouldn’t stop. ‘Oh, my bad,’ was all he said. We started mandatory substance tests for all new employees after that.” —

43) “I worked at a car factory where a guy got fired for tasting the rust inhibitor. This was after he once attempted to slide on his belly under a row of carriers (moved the bumpers on a line throughout the factory) because he thought it would save time. Direct quote from my boss on the subject, ‘I mean, there are some places for stupid people around here, but this is just beyond stupid. If I put him on the wash, he might wander inside to see how it works.'” —

44) “I had to fire an older waitress because the owners were afraid that when we switched to computers, she wouldn’t be able to learn to use them. They made this assumption based on her age, which wasn’t even that old (mid 40s). The same place wanted me to fire a pregnant girl because they were afraid she would fall down at work. Luckily she quit before I had to.” —

45) “I had an employee once test out the fire-suppression system at a restaurant. Turns out, it worked great and we had to shut down the restaurant for four hours in the middle of the day to clean it up. He’s not the dumbest one involved, though. The dumbest was the guy who told him the suppression system didn’t work so that the idiot would pull it. That guy thought we couldn’t fire him since he didn’t actually pull the pin. That’s right, he thought he could dare someone to do thousands of dollars in damage, and wouldn’t get fired.” —

46) “He took a crap in an empty paint bucket on a commercial job instead of going to the restroom that was just outside. We got fined for $2,500.” —

47) “I used to run a coffee shop. I had to fire one of our baristas because he kept calling in ‘tired.’ He’d chat online with his girlfriend all night or play video games until the morning, and then call me to cover his shift. It happened twice and then he was gone. I mean, you work in a coffee shop with free coffee, suck it up. We’re all tired, idiot.” —

48) “Years ago, I temped in a clean room working on computer parts. One day, I suddenly smelled some smoke coming from in the clean room, which wasn’t supposed to happen, ever. Next thing I knew, everybody was getting up. I followed the crowd. There were two clean rooms separated by a hallway. In the middle, there was a room that cleaned the air that circulated into the two clean rooms. The crowd from our clean room converged with a crowd from the other clean room, and the supervisors went in. Inside were a couple of guys smoking in the back. They thought it was the perfect spot because the air was being pulled out of the room and they couldn’t smell it. Everything had to be scrapped. Losses in the tens of thousands. Both fired on the spot, police called.” —

49) “A concessions attendant gave a ‘special’ brownie to my 75-year-old door person at my movie theatre. She didn’t press charges, but he had to go. No paperwork on it either, I had him resign.” —

50) “An underaged employee took a sample of some adult beverages from a vendor while on the clock. He was so surprised when we fired him, too.” —

51) “Dude printed out over 100 pictures of men’s junk and left them on the community printer. When our elderly receptionist came in the next morning, she was mortified. The dude said it was for an art project and he totally forgot to pick them up before he went to his night class. He was actually surprised that he was getting fired.” —

52) “I had to fire a server for eating leftovers off of plates in the dish pit. The worst part is, she had been warned multiple times.” —