From rubbing a pregnant co-worker's belly without her consent to drinking adult beverages on the job without paying for it, managers share the most unprofessional thing an employee did that got them fired on the spot.
[Content has been edited for clarity]
It Was Just Spice. Sure.
“I had an employee pass out in his truck in a customers driveway. Customer called me to report, said the employee had a glass pipe on his chest. Luckily guy decides to call me instead of the sheriff. The employee was picked up and brought back to shop.
When asked what was going on he stated, ‘I was on break, it wasn’t what you think it was … it was just spice.’
Sorry bud, I don’t think this is going to work out.”
The Nerves Of This Guy!
“An employee started rubbing a pregnant co-workers belly 3 times after being asked to stop and then asked her if her husband was good in bed.
I fired him and he asked if we could still be friends. I told him absolutely not. He then tried to file for unemployment after only working there for 3 weeks, part-time.”
What You Get For Disrespecting The Hostess And Throwing Things Around
“I used to manage a restaurant. My hosts were in charge of taking to-go orders, but I couldn’t have them far away from the host stand, so I had them grab a server to help them take the orders.
On his second day, my host came to me and said: ‘I asked the new guy to grab the to-go order for me and he told me that it’s not his job.’
It was the end of the shift and everyone was putting chairs up, so instead of singling him out, I just pulled everyone together and said ‘Hey… if they ask you to get a to-go order, you do it. They aren’t asking you because they’re lazy… they’re asking you because I’ve told them to ask you.’
After my little speech, he turned around and started slamming chairs around. Nope, you’re gone. You don’t get to cuss out my 17-year-old hostess then slam things around on your second day.”
This Waitress Doesn’t Take Her Job Seriously
“I worked as a bartender at a restaurant. I was cashing out a waitress who decided to enter the bar to ‘make herself a smoothie.’ After fumbling around she dropped a glass from the hanger and it smashed all over the counter. I told her she’s going to need to clean that up before I can finish cashing her out. She then begged me that she needs her tips right now as her friend, whom she owes money to, was waiting outside and that she was going to deliver the money, come back and clean it up.
She never came back. I had to replace all the ice and all the fruit garnishes on a busy weekend night because of broken bits of glass that landed all over. Of course, the manager came over to ask why the drink tickets are 10 minutes long and I told him what happened. He then immediately went into the schedule and gave all her future shifts away to others. The waitress called the restaurant not even 5 minutes later to ask why her shifts have been forcibly given away and the manager replied, ’cause you’re fired,’ and hung up.”
Completely Neglectful On The Job
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“I was the manager at a local concrete plant. We hired a new yardman whose responsibilities were to drive the payloader and load the plant when needed and keep the piles of sand and aggregate pushed up and clean. I trained him for a few hours on the machine (he had experience but on a different style of loader), and then returned to my office.
A while later, I looked over the yard and saw the loader sitting on top of the 3/4″ gravel pile at a 45-degree angle, the bucket full and raised, motionless. I called to him on the mobile radio and got no response. The piles were in the far back of the yard, and for the next few minutes I called again, and again but my calls were unanswered. Fearing a mechanical, or worst-case scenario a medical emergency, with one of my other dispatchers I ran the 150 or so meters from the office, through the yard to the loader, and there he was, on his cell phone.
I climbed the ladder and banged on the door, and he responded in a rather loud voice, ‘HEY! I am on the phone!!’ I immediately told him to dump his bucket and come down off of the pile. At first, he ignored me, but after a second request he complied, but he was visibly aggravated. He proceeded to ask me what my problem was, to which I respond, ‘My problem is, as of right now I need to hire someone to drive this loader. Get off the property.’ He was very sour about it, and as the three of us walked back to the office I radioed the owner, who had his termination slip ready when we got there.”
The Assistant Manager Should Know The Rules
“I had to terminate my Assistant Manager last month. I got a few texts from employees (I was off that day) saying that he was drinking an adult beverage with his lunch (Still on shift and working. The business is a restaurant).
Of course, I can’t just go on the word of others so when I went in the next day I checked the security footage. I saw him pour a drink and put it on the bar. I thought ‘Ok, this could be for a customer.’ He walked away and came back with one of our customer drink cups, a lid, and straw. Ok. Strange. Kept watching, saw him prepare his food, sit and start eating. (He was eating/drinking at the bar/customer area).
Then he started drinking the beverage. I watched him finish his food and pour the adult beverage he hadn’t finished into the empty customer cup, put the lid on and straw in and take it to the back.
I called my bosses and informed them (because we want to be sure things are done legally) and we found out that we can’t terminate someone for drinking on the job (they could say they have an addiction and then we would have to pay for their rehab) So, I checked our product sales to see how many drinks were purchased that day, and found out the time stamps for the times that specific drink was purchased, watched the camera footage at the cash for the hour before, during and after the drink transactions to see if he put them through. He wasn’t near the cash at any point. So, the beverage he drank while on shift, he didn’t pay for. This is theft.
When he came in the next day for his shift, I was waiting for him with one of the store owners. I sat down, told him it came to my attention he was drinking on shift and asked him point blank ‘did you pay for the drink?’ He said no. I terminated him for theft.
As the owner told him. As Assistant, he’s held to a higher standard than other employees and he needs to be as ‘squeaky clean as Charmain,’ and that A) Drinking on shift is a bad example to other staff and B) not paying for the beverage is even worse. Other staff may see that and think they don’t have to pay for things/can drink on shift because ‘the Assistant Manager can do it.'”
Bad Mouthing Customers Is A No-No
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“I used to manage a call center for a large corporation with a few stores that had retail counters. Corporate would require these guys to have a minimum phone time or else you’d run the risk of being written up. The higher-ups and their infinite wisdom decide that hold time is just as good as actual talk time. So there was a lot of employees manipulating their phone times like calling their own cell phones and putting themselves on hold. I wrote a few employees up for these actions (I don’t blame them, I would have done the same thing). Anyways, we fire one employee for typical reasons (disobedient, disrespectful, multiple warnings). Whenever we fire someone we review all their company emails to make sure we take care of any unfinished deals and we found an email string between him and another employee that worked on a retail counter showing off their long hold times with actual customers. They’d bad mouth the customers saying how stupid they were. Some customers were waiting 15-20 minutes for help just so they can get their daily phone time up. Normally I hated having to fire someone, that one was easy.”
This Guy Clearly Has Issues
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“I hired a new server and a few hours into his shift he took a break. I got a phone call from the owner of the motel across the street a few minutes later. He apparently got into an argument with his girlfriend and smacked her. The motel owner saw this and confronted him and he pointed at his car and said he had a machete in there and if she didn’t mind her business he would harm her. Needless to say, he was fired on the spot.
The next day the convenience store across the street hired him. My wife was walking by and he threatened her in front of his new co-workers. We know the owners well, called them, and he was again fired on the spot. Thankfully we never saw him again.”
The Incident At The Golf Course
“I worked at a golf course during the summer as a lead instructor for golf camps, we had just hired 2 high school guys to help out. Each day I usually went through a small teaching session and then let them out on the course to play. So, I finished the lesson and sent groups out to different holes.
I told them I would watch over holes 1-5 and they would watch over 6-9. I gave them their own cart (big mistake on my end) to navigate quicker from hole to hole. Everything was going smoothly until about an hour later when one of the kids came up to me and said there were dirt trails all over #8 green.
I took my cart over to inspect it and sure enough, these kids were doing burnouts and drifting on the green. Now I’m irate and want to go confront these kids and yell them out. I head back down the fairway towards hole 7 to find these guys and kid you not, they are literally chasing a beaver around in their golf cart. A beaver, on a course with literally no ponds and water traps. How this beaver got there, I have no idea, but what I do know is that these two got fired immediately after that.
We decided not to hire anymore high school kids after this fiasco.”
The Most Unprofessional Question From This Odd Kid
“I managed a bowling center for about 10 years. I hired a kid who’d never had a job before, and he was a little on the ‘odd’ side, but he seemed pretty smart, so I took a chance on him. About a month into his employment, a very very large woman came in with her family. This kid couldn’t believe how big she was. He kept insisting to everyone that it was a costume, ‘that HAS to be a suit,’ he kept saying. He wouldn’t give it up. He then decided to get the truth… he walked up to this poor woman in front of her entire family, and asked her, ‘are you this big or is this a costume?’
I’ve never been so dumbfounded in my life. He was suspended immediately and terminated after the HR investigation.
The woman was so upset, she ended up getting some pretty hefty compensation from the hotel, which was much deserved.”
Letting Go Of The Wrong Person First
“I run a restaurant/pizzeria. My longest-tenured employee went in early to light the ovens and get a head start on baking bread. A co-worker came in a little bit after and for some reason they had an argument and she went outside to wait for my wife or me to come in. My wife got there first and the girl told her what happened (whatever it was, the guy was in the wrong. I can’t remember what time was over) and my wife went to go get the male employee to get his side, but the girl out of nowhere jumped on him and started punching him in the face. Obviously she was let go as soon as that happened. When the whole story came out and the security tape had been watched, I’d have probably let go of the guy before she hit him.”
The One That Is Rude And Causes A Scene
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“I’m a retail manager. I had an employee that we hired for a seasonal position. She worked pretty well but was kind of loud and obnoxious. She liked to sneak food to her cash register and eat between customers despite a couple of warnings. I thought I saw her with food at her register again so I went to investigate. As I walked up to her she had a full on fast food meal sitting in an open drawer with a customer in front of her. She realized I was standing behind her and said: ‘what are you looking at!?’ She was terminated on the spot. She even went as far as to purposely bump into me while leaving and started screaming that I hit her. She had announced that she was pregnant a week or so earlier so of course that played into the drama. She said she was going to sue me for hitting her and her baby. She was nuts. Nothing ever came of it. She called the district manager later that week to complain about me. I had already sent the DM the camera footage so he just politely told her to get out and we never heard from her again.”
He Just Can’t Fit In
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“I was a house manager for a men’s ministry. We took people in typically right from jail or other situations where they needed to get back on their feet and back into society.
We got a new guy sent to us that at first wanted to join in. He had the shortest time anyone there at three days. Within those three days he: complained about the amount of work that was expected despite signing paperwork that he’d be willing to do it, left food and dirty dishes in the living room, left a broken raw egg on the floor outside his room, stole food from someone else, passed out watching tv, sold his meds for adult beverage money, and got wasted enough he slipped and fell, resulting in him going to the hospital.
We told the people that were his counselors that he was just not going to fit in and had them pick up his stuff while he was in the hospital.”
The Dog Thief
“I managed a dog daycare and boarding facility that was closed every day from 12p-2p. Apparently, one of my brand new (she’d just finished her week-long training) employees were in the parking lot during one such break. Clients came to drop off their two dogs (because who pays attention to operating hours) during the break and she took the dogs and took them home. When I was doing preshift I wondered where the employee was because she hadn’t shown up yet, another one of my employees told me what happened. I called the woman to find out where she was and she said she was running late. Walked in 45 minutes after her shift started with two client dogs. It is the only time I ever lost it in front of any of my subordinates, I had my assistant take the dogs, looked at the woman and said ‘get out of my facility and if you ever return I will call the police.'”
Feeling Like The Work Isn’t Worth His Time
“I was training a guy how to do housekeeping, it wasn’t easy to work but it was decent money and often paid good tips. 99.99% of the time it was women applying for the work, but once we had a guy apply. A 20-something year old man, but he seemed gung-ho and it was honestly nice to have somebody taller and stronger than most of the rest of us (who aren’t exactly tiny weaklings) want to try. His very first job I’m showing him the ropes and explaining my process and reasons why I did things in a certain order, blah blah blah oh and make sure you pay attention to these details because it actually makes a big difference. Same stuff I would say to any other employee, and I was actually in a really cheerful mood to not have to do this house alone and get done sooner so it wasn’t condescending or anything. We were only in about a half hour or 45 minutes and he decided he was above this work, he was better than it, and didn’t want to be taught how to do it and walked out. I had driven us both and it’s a 20 minute drive from the town we both lived in, and he hated it enough to WALK home. The homeowner came downstairs a little later after I called our business owner and finished crying a little (because ouch) and was confused. I tried my best to turn it around and gave her a big discount, she was a regular and already wary about hiring a dude and I didn’t want to make her feel she couldn’t trust us.”
A Smart Kid Who Ended His Opportunities
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“Stealing directly from the register. He had developed a method to add up order totals in his head and give the correct change, even though he had canceled the items on the receipt. He would then pocket the cash. From the drawer when the total of voided items hit $20 or so. It was always non-kitchen items, so the items were never missed by the cooks. I have no idea how long he did this, but he was a trusted employee and was smart enough that the toll was rarely over or under more than $5. We only caught him by chance because another employee had a question about something that required viewing the security cameras. After adding up what he had stolen in the two weeks on the camera, it was easily over $1000. He could have been doing that for the two years I employed him. I always wondered why my profit margins were so much lower than similar sales stores. We did call the cops and I had to detain him until they got there. Such a shame. He was a smart kid and a good worker, but had some bad habits that ultimately ended him in prison.”
Like A Scene Out Of A Movie
“At the local coffee shop, we had those ‘donate a penny’ things for charity you see all the time. One time I came in and noticed one of them was missing. I told my manager, and after they went through the previous night’s security footage. She found a tall guy with a white-person afro in a hoodie take the box. (This manager was pretty laid back and she showed me and the people on shift the footage when she found it). The camera was pretty terrible, and we didn’t get a clear look at the guy’s face, but the manager DID notice the same white-afro guy with a hoodie about 20 minutes beforehand order food at the counter. That, and drop off his resume and a completed application for our shop.
So the manager gave the guy a call, asking him to come for an interview. Sets the time and date. She went through the motions, telling him about the job and what he would be doing. Then the owner of the store goes out and greets him, and asks him why he stole our charity box at 2 am. As the guy starts to stammer out ‘It was late and I was hungry…’ COPS come out from the back and handcuff the guy right on the spot and take him away.
It felt like a scene straight out of a movie. The manager told me the box had less than $4 in it at the time.”