A lot of us have been let go in the past --- but how many of you can say you were fired your very first day of work?!
Gross
Not first day but first week. So let me preface this by saying I used to be an AGM of an IHOP. And I hired an overnight server. Pretty standard overnight type. (They are always odd balls) but this guy took the cake. I would make a habit of checking up on my overnight employees because obviously it’s easy to sit around and do nothing when work could be getting done (standard annoying ass manager shit I know) so I watching camera footage of his shifts after a week and I keep seeing him sit down in the one booth. This booth had minimal camera coverage and I could only see a little of him sitting there. I thought he was sleeping but didn’t have enough evidence to prove it so I moved the camera over a little to capture the whole booth. His next shift sure enough he goes and sits in that booth and then something awful happens. ON CAMERA I HAVE THIS GROWN MAN (like 35 years old) starts to JERK OFF on the clock IN THE DINING ROOM. I was 19 at the time and that was the most awkward termination I ever had to deal with. I just rolled the camera footage in front of him and handed him a termination paper and said “please sign this, we will mail your last check, don’t come back.” He tried to file for unemployment due to wrongful termination. I had to send the video of a man clearly jerking off to my district manager who I imagine sent it to corporate so they could deal with it. (Source)
That’s Awful
Not my team, but another team within the department we worked closely with. They poached this girl from another company, who moved to San Fran from New York. Turns out the VP (my boss) who okay’ed the hire was just trying to appease the other director who was bugging him incessantly for more resources. The VP KNEW there were gonna be budget cuts and mass layoffs. But instead of man-ing up and saying no, he said “hire whomever you want” and went on vacation when the layoffs happened, which happened to be on the first day the girl started (she took the week before to move and get settled in San Fran). She was literally in the office for 2 hours (at new hire orientation) before they laid her off. I still work for this company unfortunately. F*ck this place. It’s what happens when a startup becomes successful and are managed by a bunch of inexperienced jackasses who hire outside jackasses. (Source)
Fired? No, Arrested.
I didn’t fire this guy personally but I did one better, I arrested him. I’m a police officer in the UK, and I was forced to help on a recruitment event in our headquarters where applicants turned up, listened to a talk and did a few exams. Almost all wore suits or shirts and ties, except one… One was wearing a black polo shirt, black combat trousers and tactical boots, weird and a bad impression but whatever. Whilst they did the exam I went into the yard for a smoke. All the applicants had to park in a certain area, which was just by the smoking shelter. One car stood out, it looked just like our unmarked cars, exactly like our unmarked’s. I was a little confused so I had a closer look at it. It had radiator lights and on the back seat was a police issue stab vest.
I thought that it must be one of our cars parked in the wrong place, it happens. After the exam they left, I watched them leave and lo and behold polo shirt man gets in the “unmarked car.” Immediately, I jump in a real unmarked and take off after him. I found him 2 streets away putting blue lights on and driving through a red light. I overtook him, put my lights on and blocked him. He gets out waving a fake warrant card telling me he was en route to an emergency. Arrested for impersonating a police officer. He was also suspected of doing the same in about 3 other forces. (Source)
“This Isn’t Going To Work”
The job hours were from 8am to 4:30pm, Monday through Friday. Our new hire showed up about 10 minutes late on the first day. Normally 10 minutes late isn’t that big a deal to me, but it was his first day, and I had pulled 3 other staff members into our 8am meeting so we could discuss the training schedule with our new hire. So we’re already in our meeting when the new guy walks in. He doesn’t apologize for being late – he just sits down as I’m going over the training schedule for the week. After a few minutes of listening to us discuss what he’s going to be doing for the rest of this week, he raises his hand and says, “Can we reschedule the afternoon sessions planned for today and tomorrow? I have to leave at 11 today and 12:30 tomorrow.” This was the first time I was hearing about these plans. I asked the 3 staff supervisors to give me an opportunity to speak with the new guy alone for a few minutes. They leave the room, so I start talking to the guy about how he can’t just change his schedule without running it by management first. As I’m talking to this guy, he gets a text. He looks down at his phone and puts his hand up, as if he were telling me, “I’ll be with you right after I finish reading this text”. As soon as he finished reading the text and looked back at me, I said, “This isn’t going to work. Please make sure you take everything you brought with you and do not return. I’ll have HR email you your separation papers.” He seemed pretty shocked and asked what he did wrong so I told him. He tried to explain himself, but I told him that it’s best if he finds somewhere else to work. (Source)
One Big Bloody Mess
I manage a coffee shop lunchy-type place. Young girl came in fresh out of culinary school and had previous coffee shop experience. What could go wrong, right? The first day I had her shadow the other employees just to get a hang of the POS system and general flow of the store. Nope, customers overwhelmed her and she liked to hide in the back leaning on the ice machine. Fine. Whatever. She said she loved baking earlier on so I sent her to the kitchen to make some cookies. I’m super chill, I didn’t even care what kind, as long as they were f*cking awesome and delicious she had creative control. She comes out some time later admitting she doesn’t know how to make cookies and needs help. Now I’m getting bloody frustrated. As we move on into lunch rush a wave of customers flood the front of house and I was needed. I had 40 liters of soup in the back needing a titch more roux and asked her to thicken it a tad before serving. Surely she could handle that, soups and sauces being addressed in the first bloody week of the culinary school she apparently attended (I attended the same program, btw). Nope. She found a box of corn starch and dumped the whole box in. Dry. Soup destroyed. Her shift ended shortly afterwards. Turns out I forgot to get her contact information at the beginning of the shift so I had to message her on Facebook telling her not to bother ever returning. Classy, I know, but she was just one huge bloody mess I couldn’t even begin to fix. (Source)
He Got Too Sexy With It
I worked at an upscale cocktail lounge as a bar tender. One day my boss hired this new guy to work behind the bar with us. It was rush and the bar was packed and we were all running around. Then, this new guy comes up to the sink behind the bar, kneels down, puts his hair under the running faucet and then flings his head back leaving a splatter on the wall behind him. He then proceeds to smooth his hair down…at rush…in front of customers…He didn’t stay long. (Source)
Scumbag
My old manager (matron at a psychiatric secure hospital) told me of a guy who was employed as a healthcare assistant, working with people with a learning disability. Part of his role involved escorting patients into the community to help them with shopping. He took his first charge to a shopping centre and proceeded to spend £250 on their debit card buying electronic goods for himself…which he then brought back to the hospital and asked for them to be stored in the staff room until the end of his shift. He left with the police. (Source)
Special Snowflake
I got to fire my co-managers sister who called 5 minutes before her first shift and said she’d be there in an hour because she just sat down to dinner with friends. “What do you mean you just sat down for dinner? Your first shift is in 5 minutes?” “Yeah I know. But we were out and decided to go for dinner. I’ll still be there, just a little late.” “An hour isn’t a ‘little’ late. Be here in 5 minutes or don’t bother coming in at all.” “But the manager is my sister! She gave me the job! Yes she did. See you in 5, or not at all.”
Tarzan
Did a Tarzan swing on a overhead hoist remote cable going some 20 feet before the cable tore out. It only took maintenance 20 minutes to fix, but he was gone by then. (Source)
“I’m Just Making Sure!”
Know someone who works at a warehouse that stores and ships boxes of pharmaceuticals. There are some understandably pretty tight handling rules so nothing goes missing and everything is stored properly. One day they had a guy start that asked if they should open the oxy to count them to make sure that there was as many in the bottle as it said there was. He asked multiple people this, was gone shortly after. (Source)
Why Would You Tell Them?
Work at a used record store. While giving the guy the tour he mentions how we underbelly our LPS and let’s us know he’s just going to use his employee discount to re-sell all the good stuff that comes in in our eBay Store. He lasted about an hour. (Source)
Fired The Next Day
I’m not a manager, but I had a potential co-worker who called in sick. I guess he didn’t know that the manager didn’t have to work through the evening and bumped into him at the movies. My boss told us this as he fired him the next day. (Source)
Guess Who We Could See?
I worked at a popular teen/college kid clothing store. I wasn’t the manager, but I trained new hires. This one girl shopped at the store a lot and we were excited to hire her. She was let go because she was late, was caught trying on clothes instead of greeting, and apparently laughed when anyone asked for a size larger than a medium. Her family showed up at the end of her shift, and tried to buy $2k-$3k worth of clothes with her employee discount. Corporate policy sucks, so they got a good portion of it. Her mom tried to bring it all back years later (completely worn/destroyed) and threw a fit saying she should get full price because the girl had died. Guess who we could all see sitting in her mom’s car? (Source)
5+ Years Then This?
My chef hired a guy who was less than a week out of prison for dealing. He was just going to wash dishes. Seemed like an ok guy, just looking for some work because he had just done 5+ years. So, day one, he goes to head chef and asks, “Hey man, you know anybody here who wants to buy heroin?” Out the door 2 hours into his first job out of the joint. (Source)
3 Hours
IT position, supposedly had a BA in computer science with 2 years experience in relevant technical position. I didn’t interview him.
We very quickly discovered that his computer abilities were non existent — he started asking questions until he broke down and said he lied on his resume because he wanted to make more money. His previous job was drywall installation. We gave him a list of software he needed, available via a URL. He didn’t know what to do with a URL or what a URL was and then it quickly unravelled. It was about 3 hours because the first 2 were paperwork. (Source)
Creep
The most memorable firing I witnessed was this man who got hired as VP of Marketing. He thought the title gave him the right to be late on his first day for an important meeting with our board members, VP and CEO. Though irritating, he was given a pass since he was new and rewarded with a second chance to impress. This proved to be useless as he was later heard propositioning our new interns for sex in exchange to be in this imaginary marketing campaign that supposedly would come with endless perks and cash. The CEO personally escorted him out and kindly told him to go f*ck himself. In the most PC way of course. (Source)
The Repeat Offender
I work for a company that takes care of the HR needs of other small companies in my area. New hires often come in to fill out paperwork. We had this guy who came in, filled out his name and social security number, gave it to us, then proceeded to steal the front desk guy’s wallet and keys. Right in front of the very visible security camera. Turns out the police knew the guy as we was a repeat offender. He lived right around the corner. (Source)