You can't judge a book by its cover, but maybe these managers should've paid attention to the signs. These employees definitely didn't last long after frustrating these managers.
He Couldn’t Even Remember The Password HE Created
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“I ran a call center; both incoming and outgoing calls. Turn on three programs, hit the button and everything works automatically. Pretty simple. We hire a lot of felons because we think society gives them a raw deal when they get out.
This guy was early to mid-30s. Had been a mortgage broker before getting arrested for killing a neighbor. Turns out, he didn’t kill his neighbor, or at least the state couldn’t prove he did, but he still ended up doing two years waiting for trial.
The other employees refused to help him after the first week because he would ask the same question every day. THE EXACT SAME QUESTION. He would ask me and I’d look at the rest of the phone room like are you kidding me, is this a prank? This has to be a prank right? Do you have a condition where you forget everything every night?
He couldn’t figure out how to log in to email with step by step directions on the first day.
He needed step by step directions every day for everything on the computer.
Me on his third day: Did you double-click Outlook icon?
Him: Oh yeah. Now, what do I do?
Me: Type in your password.
Him: What’s my password?
Me: You picked your password the first day. That’s why it’s called a password. Only you know it.
Him: Oh yeah.
Proceeds to sit there for 15 minutes doing nothing because he doesn’t know his password.
It took me three weeks to go through all the performance improvement plan steps to fire him. But basically, I wanted to fire him on his third day.
I’m usually gentle when I fire someone. He wanted to argue he was computer literate during his termination meeting. You keep using that word.”
Nothing Would Stop Him From Saving The Love Of His Life: His Phone
“A friend of mine works at a construction recruitment agency and recently told me a great story. His colleague got a phone call in the office from a client – the foreman of a large construction site, who immediately began to scream at him to come to the site and collect a laborer from the agency who was on his first day. It transpired that this young, chavvy temp left the tracked excavator he was supposed to be operating to find the foreman and demand a socket set to remove the excavator’s seat, as he’d dropped his phone under it and couldn’t reach it. The foreman told him to bugger off and get back to work, and that he could try to retrieve his phone at the end of the day once he was off the clock. After a shouting match, the laborer stormed off, climbed into the neighboring excavator and used its bucket to rip the cab off his machine to get to his phone. Needless to say, the agency took him off the books.”
Ol’ Simeon Messed Up Again
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“My buddy, Simeon, got hired right out of school for a basic sales job. Two weeks in, most of the office is at a convention. I left the office early to finish off the day from home. The day finished out and nothing big happens.
The following Monday, security stops me as I am entering the building to ask about what we did to this kid after he got caught. ‘Caught doing what?’ Well, it turns out Simeon decided to take a break after I left for the day. He went and bought a six-pack and broke onto the roof of the building to drink and tan. We are in an 11-story building. On either side of us are 15-story buildings. Simeon decided to strip down to his underwear and tan on the roof, drinking and smoking joints. Security catches him, he blows smoke in the guard’s face and tells him to bugger off. Gets kicked off the property.
None of us in the office heard anything about this. Simeon was ‘sick’ and had worked from home the rest of that week. Eventually, the building contacts our HR department and Simeon is given a warning. He is somehow allowed on the property again and is told he has two strikes against him now.
The next day, Simeon shows up at noon for a ‘nine to five’ job. He calls in first to see if it is ok to come in, he slept through ‘six’ alarms. The manager says sure, come on in. Simeon arrives and is fired on the spot.”
When It Was Time To Get Down And Dirty, He Noped Out Of The Job
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“I had a new guy to train in my job where we installed TVs and various other electronics in expensive houses. I had a small part in hiring him, and even though he wasn’t from our industry, he seemed to have good skills in related fields and seemed to be willing to learn what he needed to do the job.
Our first two weeks were spent finishing up a nice theater. The house was finished, and it was pleasant easy indoor clean work. Then we moved on to the next job and had to wire the house, which involved crawling through the attic and underneath the floors pulling new wires.
I turned to this guy and told him to take these five wires down underneath the house and crawl them to the other side. He looked at me like I had three heads and said ‘What? No way! I am not going under there.’
I was taken aback. This is a huge part of the job, and he had to have known that when he was hired. After a couple minutes of talking to him, it was clear he had no intention of doing any ‘dirty’ work. He ended up going out and sitting in the work van pouting. I called our manager, and when we drove back to the office at the end of the day, his final check was waiting for him. He was stunned and got upset. He was trying to blame me as his trainer for ‘setting him up’ and ‘making him do stuff that no one would ever want to do.’
I didn’t get to see the final encounter myself, but it became the talk of the company for a while. Apparently, he never managed to get it through his head that we all had to do that type of work and I wasn’t singling him out. He blamed me and the company for him losing his job all the way out the door.
Apparently, he also tried lying to the unemployment office and got shut down when my manager explained why he was let go and he corroborated it, still assuming that we were in the wrong for asking him to do that type of work.”
“Screw You, Tyler”
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“Guy got hired as my swamper (I used to deliver cabinets in a one-ton truck throughout the area).
Boss says, ‘Got a good one for you. He’s big and strong; seems nice!’
What a great change from the scrawny 18-year-olds he usually hired to help me. The kind that would work for three days and quit because it was too physically demanding.
He starts, the first hour, we are driving to the site, he’s bragging about the stash he did last night and the girls that he got to kiss him at the club.
The second hour, at the site, he’s asking if I can pick him up for work every day if he gives me $25 a week.
The third hour, he’s asking to borrow $100 until payday. I decline and say I never lend money to co-workers.
By the end of our eight-hour day, he had gotten lunch, a pack of smokes, and promises to be picked up/dropped off every day.
I get it when you start a new job, sometimes you’re short on money. It happens. I’ve mooched smokes off people in my first weeks too.
Two weeks go by and he hasn’t paid me a cent for gas.
The third week goes by, gets the first paycheck, but only for one week, he gives me $10 and two smokes from the pack that he just bought himself.
The fourth week, I tell him if he doesn’t pay me the gas money today, he’s finding his own rides. He responds by saying, ‘Fine, I’ll just walk.’
The next day, he was 30 minutes late because I wasn’t there to pick him up.’
I tell the boss to fire this pinhead, and he does.
The guy comes to me saying, ‘I hope you know you’re taking food off of my toddler’s plate. Just some food for thought.’
I tell him to go screw himself.
I run into him and his wife a couple months later, comes to me, hands me $100 in cash and says, ‘Sorry for how I acted. I was battling the junk for most of that. You think you can get me a job again?’
I laugh and say no, I wasn’t going to put my behind on the line for him after how he treated our company.
He asks for the $100 bucks, and I tell him sure. I hand it back, ask him if he has food for his baby, and the wife looks confused. They didn’t have a baby; it was just a way to get money out of concerned people.”
“The Words That Came Out Of This Girl’s Mouth When He Fired Her Would Make Samuel L. Jackson Blush”
“I worked on the human resources team at a Target. I was the primary person that handled phone screens to determine who was worthy of calling in for in-person interviews with department heads. One day in November, I was out sick, so one of my HR teammates scheduled this one girl to come in. It was the holiday season, so if they made it past the phone screen, they were most likely hired. This angel somehow slipped through the cracks and got hired on as a seasonal cashier.
On a team member’s first day, they have to take a few of quizzes and training modules depending on their department so they can legally work for the store. Even for the departments with the most in-depth training, it should take a couple of hours depending before you go train with your associates. She’s a cashier and has maybe five to 10 minutes of multiple choice quizzes to take. She doesn’t finish the training until four hours into her six-hour shift.
When her first official cashier shift was scheduled, she didn’t show up. Instead of calling out ahead of time with an excuse of sickness or emergency, she called three hours after her shift was to start and said her baby daddy didn’t want to drive her in the rain. She asked if she could talk to the head of guest services about making up the time later that week. Coincidentally, her department head was in the office when she called and took the call on speaker. The words that came out of this girl’s mouth when he swiftly fired her over the phone would make Samuel L. Jackson blush.”
They Saw Right Through This Scammer’s Code
“My mum hired her, but I fired her.
Mum needed a website and didn’t want to wait for me to set it up — I already had a domain, hosting, graphics, and WordPress theme, so it needed maybe four hours of work, but I was busy. She decided to hire some lady to do it.
I email the lady and give her the login info and access to the stuff. She emails my mum a week later, saying I had a broken theme and she’ll need to build a new one from scratch. She’ll charge hourly, but my mum will get a discount because she understands kids messing up.
I immediately go in, kill all of her access, and change the passwords — I have the next day off and plan on doing it then. The lady emails me a few hours later saying she can’t log in or access the materials, did something happen? I tell her off, let her know I’ve looked at her ‘resume’ and she just stole stuff from other people and put her name on it, that I’ve blocked her completely, and that her ‘help’ is no longer needed. I CC my mum, then call her to explain in more detail.
Mum proceeds to be furious with me for being rude to this scam witch. That is until I get her site up and running the next day. Oh, look, no ‘broken’ theme.
Mum never apologized, but she also stopped calling out my ‘rude’ behavior and even seems oddly proud of my assertiveness now.”
She Needed To Learn Her Office Supplies
“She stapled papers in the middle of the page. Like as far as she could reach with the stapler.”
Being Sexist Would Get Him Nowhere
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“He antagonized every single female coworker.
His only way of communicating with anybody of the opposite gender was to be demeaning and constantly using facetious tones to undermine them.
Luckily, these weren’t the reserved gals he was used to at his private college. He learned this the hard way after making a joke about one of the senior member’s lunch being too small, and to eat a sandwich. She barked back, and he did not return the next day.”
This Bonnie And Clyde Couple Almost Got Away With It
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“I did work at a call-center with a couple that got hired into different divisions. He went to work in sales, and she went into customer service. This isn’t all that unusual by itself. What happened next though… wow.
Their plan from the start was to see how quickly each of them could get let go after they’d started their medical benefits, which kicked in around the 90-day mark. They were both fairly exemplary. During that time, they both began talking to the coworkers in their divisions about their off-work time, internet habits, etc. Eventually, they started canvassing their respective divisions with business cards advertising their adult film site and inviting people to join.
Apparently, they did this frequently — get a job to get medical insurance, then plot to get ‘let go’ so they could draw unemployment and continue to keep medical insurance going via COBRA. In the meantime, they’d get as many of their doctor and dental visits as they could have scheduled. THEN, they’d drum up interest in their smut cam-site, because by then they’d have gotten to know a ton of people. Who doesn’t want to see the hot girl/guy at the office fooling around?
Even the managers involved in this cluster show of a plan had to admit that the angles on all this were slick. And because Phoenix is rife with call-centers, they were able to work their way up and down a certain area of town without any of the respective businesses becoming the wiser.”
Maybe He Should’ve Kept His Dirty Addiction A Secret
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“We once had a new employee shadow me since I was the stock manager, and on day one, he bragged to me about how many substances he abused the night before. The store manager was about five feet away, and I looked over the new guy’s shoulder and shook my head. He was gone soon after.
He wasn’t immediately let go because at the time we needed the seasonal help, but even so, it only took a couple shifts of being late and smelling like smoke for him to be dealt with.
I used to work retail relatively close to a college town, so it’s not unusual to have employees hungover. I had just assumed that was the case. Mentioned in small talk that I myself was a little hungover and he just stops and goes ‘Oh, dude, let me tell you about this party’ and continued on into his wild night. Throughout the day, he had been making frequent trips to the bathroom and told me it was because his nose kept bleeding. I now knew why.
Several months later he came back to reapply for his old job because the store was under new management. I don’t think he realized that I was part of that new management or he had assumed I was just cool with it. I also have reason to believe he snuck off on his lunch break to partake in his post-work activities. I don’t have a problem with it. I’m a bit of a free spirit myself, but I just don’t bring it to work.”
She Was The Definition Of Hot Mess
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“A woman at work was not good at her job and was demoted. Then, I was asked if she could be placed under me. I agreed because I felt maybe she didn’t understand what she was doing in her former position.
The first week working for me, she was supposed to fly to meet a customer for a potential deal to demonstrate equipment and close the sale. At the designated time, the customer called and asked when she was coming.
Turns out, she never woke up that morning and missed her early flight because she was hung over from the night before. I informed her that this was unacceptable and I would finish her sales trip and she should work on some other things for the rest of the week. I gave her specific projects that needed to be completed.
I hastily booked a flight that same day, closed the deal with the original customer and then flew to her next assignment that night. When I arrived the next morning at the customer’s location, she was there and seemed surprised that I was upset with her. After allowing her to stay and informing her that she should use this as training, I worked on this account all day. I decided to take a few of the prospective customer’s employees out to dinner to try to make the deal over dinner and drinks.
As we drove back to the hotel, I gave her instructions to meet me in the hotel lobby to go to dinner.
I show up at the agreed upon time and wait for her. She doesn’t show up. Fifteen minutes later, I call her cell phone and she answers ‘Hello?’
‘Where are you?’ I ask.
‘I caught a cab to the restaurant, why?’
‘I told you to wait here.’
I show up, and she is hammered and saying inappropriate things. About an hour in, she leaves the table and disappears. A long time later, at the end of the meal, we all leave.
Right as I get back to the hotel, my cell phone rings. As it turns out she has climbed into the back of one of my customer’s trucks. Definitely passed out in the bed of the truck, she rode to his house in the middle of nowhere.
She then proceeds to hit on him and try to get into his house. (She is in her early 30s and he is in his late 60s and married.) His wife calls the police and they arrive at the same time I did. I discuss with the police that I am her boss and I will take care of it.
When I get into the car in the morning to go to the airport, I try to gently explain to her that she no longer works for the company. She proceeds to ask why. She then asks ‘Does this mean that I don’t work for you either or is it just the company?’
‘YOU STUPID JERK, YOU ARE FIRED!’ I shout and then enjoy an awkwardly silent ride to the airport.”
He Wasn’t Fit For D(oo)ty
“I was in charge of making sure this person got fired with the quickness.
We had an augmenting wage mariner show up to the ship where I was the executive officer. I am in uniform. The crew is not — they are civilian and union. The guy is a general vessel assistant (GVA) for the engineering department. Meaning, he is the lowest-paid, lowest ranked guy on the ship, able to be tasked with working in any department for basic level jobs. Cleaning, chipping, painting, wiping, loading, unloading- all those unlovely tasks that must get done.
He was tasked with mopping and cleaning up after work was done on the piping for our Marine Sanitation Device. The crapper was broken. It was nasty work, but we can’t have sewage effluent on the deck. He had the nerve to come up and complain to one of my junior officers that he was mopping poo, and the junior officer was getting to sit in the air conditioning and inventory movies.
The JO is an officer. And doing a job he was tasked with (all new JOs get a stint as movie officer — it sucks because you are in charge of several hundred movies, all tightly controlled because of copyright issues). And doing a good job of it, so I didn’t have to worry about it.
And this guy, who was prior service Navy, had the chutzpah to come up and complain he was making overtime ($18/hr) for cleaning crap. I know people who would line up to get full bennies and make $18/hr for whatever I told them to mop.
The guy was a crap show. He legitimately wondered why we weren’t using him as a ship’s photographer because apparently, that was his Naval background. Well, Skippy, that’s because the job description is plainly laid out. You sail on a ship and maintain the ship. That’s specifically why you were hired.
A dirty birdy who’d leave the head (bathroom) a wet, un-flushed mess, he drove roommates to distraction. He even refused to use ship’s linen (provided) and slept in oily work gear on the bare mattress. Ugh. I went through a living nightmare making the purchase order for those new mattresses- and you’re going to put your rank-behind engine-room coated self directly on it?
Fortunately, he was on a probationary period. I documented everything, and let the folks running our augmenting pool know he was a safety disaster waiting to happen. My regret was thankfully never repeated, as they took the hint and let him pursue other avenues of employment.”
He Couldn’t Fake This Doctor’s Note
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“My dad works for a small heating/air conditioning company and is the supervisor for all the servicemen, meaning he is in charge of hiring and firing new technicians, and making sure all the guys keep on top of their paperwork. I remember him talking about a new guy earlier this year who he claimed was just awful; I think his name was Kenny. He said anytime a guy goes out on a call, afterward they have to fill out paperwork stating what was completed and when, and the paperwork is due to the office within two days of when that particular job was completed.
Kenny would not do his paperwork for weeks at a time, and not until my dad hounded him about it. I remember my dad saying for one job, a week went by where he had told Kenny every single day to do the paperwork, and he never did it. He wanted to fire Kenny because this had happened multiple times, but he has to run all decisions by the owner before he fires someone, and the owner kept telling him to give Kenny another chance.
He eventually did get fired, but it was due to failing a substance test. He failed once and my dad confronted him about it. Kenny begged to be allowed to retake it, claiming there had to be some mistake. So he was given another chance. Now when their company does substance tests, they are allowed to go to a clinic of their choice within the allotted time. So for his second substance test, Kenny allegedly brought in a handwritten note from a doctor that just said ‘Kenny passed his screening’ with the doctor’s signature. No paperwork, no test results faxed to the company. Just a handwritten note. So the owner asked Kenny for the contact info for the doctor so they could call and speak with him. When they called, it was a random number and they had no idea who Kenny was. So the owner confronted Kenny, and he confessed that he wrote the note himself because he knew he couldn’t pass a substance test. So my dad was then allowed to fire him, finally.”