Sure the job interview might have gone well, but actually having to work with a person day in and day out reveals just who they really are. These employees certainly didn't last long, but the reason they were let go was completely unexpected. Things were beyond awkward in the office that day. Content has been edited for clarity.
Looking For Fresh Meat

“I’m training a new girl. We’re sitting at a computer together. The whole time I’m training her, she’s scanning the perimeter around her. She’s asking about this guy. Is he single? What about that guy? She’s paying very little to no attention to what I’m telling her about, you know, the JOB. She’s not even looking at what I’m doing as I’m demonstrating the work to her. She’s ogling every male who walks past. At first, I was nice. Okay, did you see what I just did there? Now when this happens, we do that. Her eyes were glazed over, she wasn’t absorbing anything. Nice wasn’t working.
After a time, I said to her very sharply, ‘Are you here to work, or are you here looking for a boyfriend? Because if you’re not here to work, I’m going to need to find someone else for this job.’
That snapped her into reality for about fifteen minutes. I finally said that it was break time. She smiled and said, ‘I’m going to go up to the 4th floor and see if there’s any fresh meat up there.’
After break time, I sent her into the fax room to collect some faxes I needed. The mail guy was in there changing rolls of fax paper. He came out of the mail room and said I think there’s something wrong with your new girl. He was very nervous. I asked what happened. Apparently she was in the fax room which tended to get hot because of all the machines in there. She had perched her butt up on the edge of the table, hiked her dress up to where her underwear was showing, arched her back, unbuttoned the front of her dress, and fanned herself with the sheaf of fax pages and said, ‘Oh, it’s just so HOT in here!’
Yeah. Like that. Like the opening of an adult film. I totally believed him. I believed she did that. 100%, she totally did that. I called her temp agency and said she’s not working out. I think all of this lasted for less than two hours.’
Did He Expect It To Work?

“I fired a guy for looking to pay someone to cast black magic on the owner and the owner’s family, in order to bewitch them into giving him a raise and, ironically, never firing him. The only reason I found out was because he asked someone else in the office for help in finding a witch doctor to cast the spells, and naturally, word got around. No one wanted to be in the same room as him after that.
When I confronted him, he said that the devil made him do it, so it wasn’t his fault. I live in the Middle East. I definitely did not wake up expecting to fire someone for black magic that day. Side note: practicing black magic is literally a death sentence here.”
Almost Gotten Away With It

“One employee was fired for pretending to ring up his friend. He could have gotten away with it, too. He scanned everything on price check mode, pretended to swipe his buddy’s credit card, and took a length of blank register tape out as if a receipt were printed out on it. No one noticed anything off. Except his buddy never asked him to do it. The cashier took it upon himself to hook him up, and at the end of the transaction, the friend was thinking, ‘What just happened?!’
He felt so guilty the next day that he brought the items back and told the manager what had happened. He was already under suspicion of taking $20 from the register. Then $20 disappeared form another register, but not one that she had been using. Except the security footage did show something at the register. Turns out she memorized another employee’s register number to cheat the records. She also activated a gift card for $100 and keyed in $100, as if someone had paid $100 for the gift card. Of course, that night the register was $100 short, and the activation of the card was on the receipt.”
Night Of The Living Dead

“One fellow contractor had a safety guy for six months. One weekend, he took a trip out of town for non-work related reasons. But he used the company truck, and charged it all on the company credit card. On his way up there, he ran a random person off the road, who just so happened to be one of the owners of another contractor who works closely with our team. Shortly after this, he was fired, and I’m sure criminal charges were being brought against him.
A couple weeks later, his wife calls his former employer saying he had called her randomly and killed himself in his truck on the side of the highway. Another colleague and I went searching for records of this guy, but we couldn’t find anything. There were no claims of a suicide in the local paper where he supposedly killed himself at. We thought it was weird, but whatever. It turns out this guy falsified all his qualifications and job experience.
Fast-forward a month later, and I heard through the grapevine that the original contractor who had employed this guy received a call from some contractor across country, because he applied for work there and put them down as his previous employer. He faked his own death to get out of trouble with the company, then proceeded to put them down on his resume, not expecting anyone to check his references.
It’s one thing to not think your reputation will get around to other contractors. But to think that no one will call on your previous experience to find out what happened. Especially when you know your previous employer thinks you’re dead. For one, it’s just a terrible look. On top of that, since there were legal issues, you just let the people who are potentially going to charge you know you are still alive and potentially where you are located. Not a smart move.
I honestly haven’t heard any more of him after that. I’m not sure if they ended up pursuing charges or if they just felt like it wasn’t worth the hassle. I’m confident it will all catch up to him eventually. People like that always end up getting themselves into trouble.”
Pet Store Pandemonium

“I worked at a pet store, and I was the lead cashier. I had to train this girl who didn’t think she had to abide by the uniform, because apparently our pet store wasn’t a big deal and doesn’t count as a real job. That costed her a warning, as she did need to follow the uniform rules. Then when ringing up customers, she actually told customers they couldn’t buy certain items because we were running low, and she planned on getting a pet soon and wanted these items. I apologized and rung them up.
Second warning occurred when I was explaining how she was only allowed to shop when she was off the clock. Finally, my manager fired her when she tried to steal one of the cats that were up for adoption, after being told she needed to wait for approval after they do a home visit and make sure she can care for the cat. Her excuse for trying to steal the cat? Her landlord doesn’t allow pets so she wouldn’t be approved. Apparently she’d be a much better pet parent then anyone else who wanted the cat and much better than any of the customers we got. The girl didn’t even last a week.
She never had the whole thinking things through concept down. I hope she’s grown and matured since then. I honestly was glad she wasn’t my headache anymore and that she was put on this organization’s blacklist.”
Where Did They Find These People?

“This all happened in the 90s before home computers and the internet were mainstream, and NOBODY except salesmen and rich people had cell phones (often called ‘car phones’ because people had them installed as a fixture in their cars). Average people had beepers. So that’s the context. Well let me tell you. You think when you’re applying for jobs, that everyone out there is just like you, normal, right? You think you’re competing for others just like you for those jobs? Let me tell you, you’re not.
My office did no direct hiring. Everything was strictly temp to hire. That way we got to try before we buy. If we didn’t like you, you were gone and we didn’t have to worry about wrongful termination lawsuits or unemployment claims. And we liked to think we did a pretty good job of vetting the people that the temp agency sent over. I mean first they had to get past the temp agency, right? So that filtered out a lot of weirdos. And then we interviewed them before agreeing to take them on to work for us. But still people slipped through the cracks somehow!
There was the lady who had just gotten out of the hospital and started working. She had been really sick like with pneumonia and from the sounds of it, she should have still been in the hospital. She had a horrible wheezing cough that could be heard all over the office. Her only concern was asking everyone when she could expect to get hired. Her quality of work was extremely poor, but she would ask any passerby who ventured near her cubicle if they knew when we would be hiring her. Of course, they all said, ‘I don’t know,’ because they didn’t know. My boss and I were the only ones who would know that, and she wasn’t asking us, it was like she believed that others had insider info. It usually took about 4-6 months before we made a job offer, and she was asking this on her first day. Finally, that afternoon my boss sidled over to me and told me to get rid of her. He couldn’t take her wheezing nor her incessant badgering to get hired.
There was the other guy we had high hopes for. He showed up for the interview looking like JFK’s little brother. Suit, conservative hair cut, the whole enchilada. We told him to start on Monday. Monday came and this guy showed up, and at first I didn’t recognize him. He had shaved his head bald. Like completely bald, like an egg. He was young and had had a full head of hair. And it was gone. I was nonplussed, but alright with it.
I started him out with some work and put him in an empty cubicle that so happened to have a phone. Next time I walked by his desk, he was hunched over the phone, hissing into the receiver. Every time I walked by, he was on the phone. Like who on earth was he talking to? You didn’t just make personal calls during work time in this or any office back then. You just didn’t! He came up to me after only a few hours of work and said he had an emergency and had to leave. Okay, it happens right? I’m not an ogre, so I’ll see you tomorrow. Tomorrow came, and same thing happened. And the next day, same thing.
As it turns out, his wife was an elementary school teacher and the primary breadwinner. She was evidently extremely suspicious of him that he was cheating on her or lusting after the women in our office. So he would be calling her, wanting to assure her that nothing was going on, that he wasn’t thinking inappropriate thoughts about his co-workers nor hooking up with them, but as a result of him spending all his time on the phone reassuring his neurotic wife, very little work got done. Eventually she would freak out and he’d have to leave work and go home, where she knew where he was.
Then there was the lady who brought a suitcase to work and lugged it everywhere. I still remember her name, it was Esther. I do not know what her deal was or what was in the suitcase.
Then there was the guy who would come in every day and call the surf line and check the surf report. If the surf was good, he was gone. He lasted about three days, and we told him not to come back.
Then there was the gal who was 18 years old, and had a 3-year-old at home, and was pregnant with her second child. She invited her boyfriend to come visit her at work. This was not done in that office culture, it was corporate and they had standards, friends and family just didn’t drop by to visit employees. If people were coming for lunch, you met your friends outside in the parking lot and immediately left the premises. I came out of the elevator, and she and her boyfriend were saying good-bye from having lunch together. He had her pinned against the wall next to the elevator with his tongue down her throat. Her legs were wrapped around his waist. People were walking by in total disbelief. The PRESIDENT saw them and went into my boss’s office, and this woman was gone ten minutes later. Yeah, that wasn’t a good look for anyone that day. My boss was super upset.
There was this girl named Sherrie (pronounced sher-REE and you better say it right). She wore this sort of knit pants with little elf booties. She had a different color pants and booties for every day of the week. She had a huge chip on her shoulder and was always fighting with people over imagined slights. For example, one day, someone said something about people taking the bus, as in public transportation. This person had never taken public transportation before and wondered how people knew which bus to take. Sherrie assumed they were implying that bus riders were poor or something, and she was insanely upset. ‘My dad takes public transportation, what are you saying about my dad?’
Like this person had said NOTHING bad about people taking the bus and nothing bad about Sherrie’s dad, but she got all upset. One day someone told her she had low self-esteem and that’s why she was always assuming people were insulting her when they weren’t. She burst into tears, took her purse and left. There were tons more, but that’s all I can remember off the top of my head.”
Karma Has Never Been So Satisfying

“I worked at a gas station with a guy who stole $15,000 from the safe in front of a security camera. The manager gave him the opportunity to return the money without bringing in the police, and he refused. Shenanigans ensued.
Quick background: Back in the far off year of 2005, I started working at a gas station and was promoted to a low-end management position fairly quickly, despite being a slacker at this point in my life. That job was easily the most dramatic place I have ever worked. Incompetent supervisors, sadistic regional managers, stoner drama, bizarre robbery attempts, you name it. I swear I could write a book about my time there.
In the three years I worked at this weird place, the one individual I will never ever forget was a man I shall name Richard. Richard is one of the worst humans I’ve ever met. Richard was a man in his mid-forties and was a failure in every way. To begin: he was so ugly. When I say ugly I don’t mean his nose is too long or his eyes are too far apart. I’ve seen plenty of people that don’t fit modern western beautiful standards and still manage to turn heads. No, Richard had the faintest glimpses of a man who could be somewhat attractive if he’d put a little effort into his appearance, but instead felt that a thick gut and pasty skin is a small price to pay for a regular diet of drinks, fast food, and smoking. He’s poorly groomed, slouches, and has awful teeth. It’s a small miracle he showered regularly.
Richard’s appearance is only a small reason of why he was a failure. Richard was a conniving, backstabbing, two faced, hateful monster. During that awful year I knew him, he was always trying to get ahead by pushing other people back. Richard used to run a car dealership with his brother. He somehow managed to pressure his brother into selling his part of the business to him, then proceeded to run it into the ground with the stark efficiency of German Engineering from a parallel universe.
He absolutely hated black people. Like, I didn’t know people like him existed in this day and age. I remember one day we saw a black man and white woman walk towards the store holding hands, and he went off about how it boiled his blood that ‘those people’ are stealing ‘our women’, and that races should never mix. I should mention that Richard’s wife kicked him out of the house for cheating. Oh, and his wife was Asian.
Not long after starting, Richard had his eyes on moving up into management, particularly my position, and somehow got it in his head that if you got the current manager fired you would get their job. For nearly a year, he worked his butt off to get me to lose my job. I wish I was kidding, I really do. Below is a list of some of the things he did to try to get me canned:
Richard was two faced to an extreme level. When I wasn’t around, he talked about me like I was literally Hitler. He always acted friendly to me but would revert into a monster the literal second my back was turned. I could see his reflection in the mirror giving me rude gestures whenever I would turn to stack boxes. This was a regular occurrence.
Richard timed my breaks, to the second. One day I walked back from my 15-minute break about 30 seconds late, and I was greeted by Richard holding the phone with a very confused supervisor on the line.
Richard would convince other people not to do work and then blame it on me, specifically my poor management skills, since I clearly couldn’t control the people who worked under me. Richard would never do work and then blame it on me, even if I wasn’t working that day.
At one point, his best friend (and the other low level manager) didn’t show up for his shift and didn’t call in. At this job, we had a strict ‘one strike, you’re out’ policy on no-call-no-shows. This best friend of his was there for him every step of the way. He took in Richard when his wife kicked him out. He drove Richard around after he got his license suspended. I’m pretty sure he’d donate a kidney to Richard once his body gave out from all the drinks, fast food and smoking. He was that kind of guy. What did Richard do? He strutted around the gas station saying things like, ‘New manager walking!’ for several hours, while we all waited to find out what happened to his friend. His friend eventually showed up and explained that his car died and his phone ran out of batteries. Richard went on and acted like nothing happened.
During this time, I would put on my happy face and do my best to deal with him. I was much younger and filled with wide-eyed idealism and believed you could find good in anyone. This went on for what felt like an eternity until that fateful day. One day, my supervisor’s absent mindedness nearly cost him his job. My supervisor left the safe open. This apparently happened once or twice before, but whoever found it was kind enough to close the safe and call him up to let him know. This time, Richard discovered the open safe. Ever the entrepreneurial spirit, Richard easily recognized this great opportunity and took it upon himself to liberate the bountiful stash of free money. All would be clear for Richard to spend his ill-gotten gains on women and blow, if not for his careful planning not taking into account the security camera staring down at him like a God of common sense.
When the Supervisor came in an hour later, right as Richard was leaving, he soon discovered the missing money. Without hesitation, he checked the security feed and I saw my supervisor get insanely angry. A thousand suns billowing flames of hate in burning rage were all contained in the effigy of a scrawny, normally pleasant little man. He picked up the phone and smashed in Richard’s number. ‘Listen you pathetic loser, I know you did it. I know you stole the money. Get back here right now with the cash. I’ll fire you, but I won’t call the police!’
Even though the phone wasn’t on speaker, I could hear the weaselly voice of Richard making excuses. ‘No man, I didn’t take it. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
My supervisor was about to reply, but Richard hung up.
Naturally, my supervisor called the police and corporate. Richard went on the run for about 17 hours before being apprehended by the police, and he was hauled off to jail and was predictably fired. I don’t know what happened to him afterwards, but I believe he got a felony charge. I normally try to remain a compassionate person, but the thought of his life being ruined brought me quite a lot of joy at the time. The great caper occurred around Christmas, and I had opted not to accept any gifts that year because I felt like I had received the greatest gift of all. I know this makes me a terrible person but, honestly, after dealing with Richard for as long as I did, I just don’t care.
The supervisor somehow didn’t get fired. I know he should have, but I guess in all the confusion, Corporate forgot. So that’s it. That’s the story of Richard: The worst human I’ve ever met.”
She Turned Into A Zombie

“I worked in a dental office a few years back. We had hired a girl based upon a coworker’s recommendation. They were previously coworkers, and she said this girl would be fantastic. This girl seemed kinda rough around the edges, but she was a single mom and talked about loving her kids so much and doing so much for them. I liked her and trusted my coworker’s word that she was a good worker.
One day, I’m about to go on lunch break and turn the corner to clock out, and she’s standing in front of the computer like a zombie, swaying slowly side to side. I say her name and get no response. I get the coworker that was friends with her and told her to come check this out with me. Next thing I know, the new girl is pulled into the back room and is told to stay put by coworker. She doesn’t stay put for more than two minutes. She says in slurred speech she’s fine and goes into the break room. At this point her behavior is weird, scary, the lights are on and nobody’s home, and she’s acting like she just had a stroke. It was kinda scary. I go into the break room and see she’s got her phone in her hands and is trying to unlock it, but she is just tapping at the screen instead of using it and she’s mumbling about her boyfriend. I ask, ‘Hey, are you feeling okay?’
She turns to my direction, looks at me, and face plants head first into the concrete floor.
At this point, the other coworker heard the loud bang and put this employee into the bathroom, to hide her from the boss and other people in the office. New girl is reaching for her shoes and is slurring that she’s fine, but also is totally incomprehensible trying to get us to leave. For some reason, she is really concerned about her shoes and keeping them on. This girl can’t even stand up or hold her body weight up and is like immobile, but she is totally concerned with her shoes and feet.
Next thing I know, the coworker has her in a wheelchair and is wheeling her out to her car to drive her to the hospital. This employee almost falls out of the wheelchair, but is totally careless about falling and is in no pain about slamming into the floor moments earlier. We found out she was into hard substances, and she talked about being with her kids all the time when actually she hadn’t seen them in a long time and lost custody of them because of those substances.
She was keeping her supply in her shoes and was shooting up in the bathroom, thinking no one would notice. This is why she was so concerned about keeping her shoes on when we were near her. She tried saying she was wasted to our boss, thinking this would help keep her job. It did not. She was instantly fired. I’ve never seen a wasted person behave like the way that she did. It was as if an alien was wearing human skin and was trying to figure out how to act like a human.
Thinking about this still freaks me out so much. I’ve never seen something like this before and man I’ve seen a lot of stuff involving shady substances. This one takes the cake. Complete and total lack of fear and senses and being unable to feel pain or behave like a human being. It still gives me the heebiejeebies.”
“Walking Embarrassment To The Human Race”

“When I worked in hotels, I was promoted to front desk manager. My first task was to hire someone. I ended up getting this very charismatic guy that was a little over the top, but overall seemed like a solid employee. After I end up hiring him on his first day, he asked me if it’s okay if he carries his weapon on him. I think that’s strange, but it is his right, and the owners honestly didn’t care so long as he had his license. He was never able to produce a license, so he was never able to bring this weapon onto the property. About a week into his employment, we find out that he’s been calling the guests. Specifically, he called the really attractive females and asked them if they need any ‘overnight service’. We were very understaffed, and my boss decided that instead of firing him, we were going to take him off the desk and put him on basic groundsman duties. Part of these duties included driving the shuttle to the airport and back, and also filling up the shuttle when it got low on fuel, which means that he had access to the gas card.
Our accountant confronts me one day about some very strange charges to the gas card. Apparently we had been filling up the shuttle near daily at anywhere between $20 to $45. We looked into it and got the surveillance footage from the gas station, and it turns out was this guy was filling up his friends’ cars and even his own personal car. When confronted, he tells my boss that I said it was okay. Obviously that wasn’t true and they didn’t believe him. He ended up also being my first termination.
One of the other employees googled this fired guy’s name and found out he was a child predator. He was in a relationship with a 12-year-old girl when he was 26. I also found out that day that we did not actually do background checks. We just said we did and assumed anyone with a history wouldn’t bother applying. There were a few other things about him that made me raise eyebrows during his short employment. When we discovered that, I was hardly shocked. This dude was a walking embarrassment to the human race.
He never even owned a weapon. It was a bold lie to seem tough or interesting. He’d say stuff like that often. Like one time he kept saying he couldn’t wait for his cars to get shipped to him, and then he showed us a stock image of like five Ferraris. I even pointed out the watermark, but he said he always let the paparazzi (not the press apparently) take pictures of his sick rides. Dude was so full of garbage.”
She Couldn’t Leave Fast Enough

“I worked in an office and they hired a girl from a temp agency to help me. She wouldn’t do anything unless I walked her through each step after telling her she had to do it. Hey, so an estimate just arrived at the fax machine RIGHT NEXT TO YOU, could you complete the quote and send it back? Come to find out she was just playing solitaire on her computer. She was also sneaking out back and the warehouse guys thought she was using illegal substances. I told my boss that he needed to get rid of her, I would rather work alone than babysit her, so he called the temp agency and told them to stop sending her.
She showed up the next day, so boss sent her home and called the agency, saying hey she is useless, so please stop sending her. She showed up again the next day! This went on for over a week.
The people at the temp agency said they told her to stop showing up, but she kept coming in every morning, mind you usually ten to twenty minutes late. My boss wouldn’t say anything to her face, so finally I said told her how we can’t afford to pay hey, so we had to technically let her go through the temp agency. They should have told her. She seriously told me, ‘Oh, I thought they were joking!’
I was so glad she was gone.”