People Share Their Craziest “How Did I Not Get Fired?” Stories

When you've been working at a job for a while, it can become easy to start slacking. You can even start doing things you shouldn't just because you can get away with it. With no repercussions why not? The people in the following stories found themselves in situations where they thought they'd gone too far and would be fired, but ended up miraculously getting to keep their jobs.

(Content has been edited for clarity.)

Here’s An Extra $20K!

“Some years ago I worked as an armored car messenger (the person that carries money into/out of businesses) and temporarily lost a bunch of money.

We were dropping off about $40,000 to a check-cashing place, and everything went normally. Arrived, went inside, dropped off the money and had the manager sign for it.

Like 15 minutes later on our way to another place, I saw that I had another bag with the name of the check cashing place on it. It turns out that it was a chain of stores and I hadn’t verified the serial number on the bag, I stupidly saw the business name, grabbed the money and gave it to them.

At that point, I did check the serial, found that I’d delivered the wrong bag to the wrong place and had given the first store about $20k too much.

I told my driver that we had to turn around immediately and go directly back. I got lucky, and the manager hadn’t opened the bag yet (because we can’t deliver unsealed bags and businesses won’t, or shouldn’t, accept them).

I was able to explain to him that I’d given him a delivery for one of their other stores, had him sign for the correct bag and got back on our way.

I honestly don’t know how I didn’t get fired for that. I mean, I didn’t go up to any of the managers at my branch and tell them about it, but my driver knew exactly what happened, and I’d be surprised if he didn’t tell any of the other drivers/messengers. You’d think that it would just spread around the branch until it got to a higher-up.”

Text Source

Do You Smell Something Burning?

“I put 4 trays of cookies into one of our ovens, forgot to set a timer on them, and came back about an hour later to 96 very black and very on fire cookies when all of the smoke alarms in the food court started screeching

We had to usher nearly 200 very panicky people out of this place (it was peak hour), the food court probably lost thousands in business, and we didn’t reopen for almost an hour and a half after everything was under control (all of the gas to the fryers, ovens, grills etc. is automatically shut off when the fire alarm goes off, a park manager has to come and switch it back on, that usually takes a while).

I got yelled at for a good half hour by my team lead, but for some reason didn’t even get a formal write up…”

Text Source

You Can Go Far When You Work For Idiots

“I worked at an awful place several years back, where I was doing some statistical work for a marketing campaign. The boss was a witch. You know those women that wear high-heels and short skirts in January while it’s freezing outside, driving her convertible, roof down, demanding her assistant fetch her some coffee because ‘she didn’t have time to do such things,’ arriving 30 minutes late for a meeting – that kind of a jerk.

So the boss is going by my office demanding that I, ‘actually do something around here for once.’ So she scolds me for five minutes and says, ‘You’re done if you can’t produce anything in an hour.’

Fast forward an hour. I’ve copied pointless graphs and statistical data, with no value whatsoever to anything, from Google and put it into a PowerPoint with inspirational text like ‘200% increase in revenue!’ and, ‘Serious consumer estimates,’ with simple lines drawn on a graph. You know, something pointless and meaningless. Half of it doesn’t make sense in statistical terms; the other half doesn’t make sense at all. Then I just hit her with one profession related term after the other – critical value, p-value, significance, confidence interval, mean, distribution, regression, econometrics, etc and it somehow blows her away. She loves it and says I am a valuable asset to the company. Then she sends a message to accounting, and I get a raise.

It blew me away. She had no idea what she was talking about or anything remotely related to her position and line of work, and yet she somehow got to stay because her department provides results. If she had any knowledge at all about her profession, she would have fired me instantly.”

Text Source

Spared From Firing Many A Time

“I’ve taken down 9-1-1 service across my entire province on four separate occasions…

I’ve taken down 8,000+ business phones for 8 hours… 3 hours… 14 minutes…

I’ve broken voicemail for a 36 hour period province-wide.

Oh and one time I somehow lit the data center on fire.

But it was only a small fire so that one was ok.”

Text Source

This Looks Like It Could Be Right?

“I used to work for a company that builds offshore oilrig accommodations. We were working with another company on a joint venture. My job was simple: collect all of the carefully collated info from the site foreman and do two things: create a spreadsheet of everyone’s hours and send a payroll report of what had been on it to our partner company.

What did I do? I fabricated the data that was reported to the other company. I was taking a lot of illegal substances at the time, both in my own time and at work, and I couldn’t be bothered to do anything at work. So I did nothing Monday through Thursday, and then on a Friday I would make up the figures and send them. They were loosely based on reality.

I also had a 50-percent error rate on the wages. There were lines of angry people being short paid every Friday outside my office.

I also always overpaid myself. Massively. Like, entirely fabricated weekend shifts on double time. Sixty-five-hour weeks when I was working about 30 hours tops.

I never got caught for the stealing, but I did get in trouble for reporting false figures. The only reason I wasn’t sacked was that it would have drawn attention to the false data, and they couldn’t afford that.

I somehow got taken on by the company we were working with when the job ended. I know right?

I will say that although there is no excuse for any of the things I did, I am not like that now. This story took place 12 years ago when I was about 21. I no longer take illegal substances, and thus have no reason to steal from my employer.”

Text Source

Nothing Illegal About Getting Rid Of Some Trash… Right?

“The day was Black Friday. It was later in the day around 8 p.m., and my coworker was the manager of the hardware department. She had ordered a variety of keychains that were pretty cool for Christmas and were selling them to co-workers for a discount. I was chatting with her about the keychains when she told me to get a tool from behind her desk. So I went in behind her desk to see one of those 55-gallon trash cans on fire, and another coworker was staring at it. What the heck, right?

This other coworker had bought one of these keychains, which just so happened to be a lighter. For it to work, you had to fill it up with lighter fluid first. So she had gone behind the desk to fill up her new keychain but somehow spilled the fluid. She had grabbed napkins and cleaned it up. We’ll apparently not good enough, because when she went to try out her new lighter everything caught on fire, so she decided to throw the flaming napkin away. Which set more napkins that were in the trash on fire. Which is what I just walked up to find.

Not knowing what to do, but knowing I needed to act fast, I grabbed the trash can and started to drag it out the front entrance so it was outside the store (the desk couldn’t have been more than 15 feet from it).

I was outside with the burning trash can; customers were yelling at me, ‘ARE YOU DOING THIS ON PURPOSE?!?’ Lady, shut up. No, I’m not. I was keeping an eye on it, while the manager ran to grab a fire extinguisher from the shelf. The cashiers started calling for me over the headset because they needed another checker. I’M BUSY DEALING WITH A FIRE! TELL THE CUSTOMERS THEY CAN WAIT! She finally came out and started spraying the fire. It was a small extinguisher, so it wasn’t very effective, the garbage fire continued to rage. That’s when I had an idea: we had a nearby pallet of ice melt, I’LL SMOTHER IT! So I opened a bag and poured it into the trash can. Seemed effective, but the flames continued. I opened another and poured it on the flames. No more flames. Whew… finally. We stayed out at the entrance for maybe five minutes to make sure the fire stayed smothered. But we had another issue. A slightly burnt trash can with a giant hole burnt in its side. Our trash compactor is in the rear of the store. I could drag this trash can through the store with salt escaping through this giant hole. It just so happened that a restaurant was being built in the same parking lot that had a giant dumpster for their construction. Seems like I had an obvious choice. So the manager and I dragged a salt-filled trash can to this dumpster and managed to fling it in. All’s well that ends well. That manager was off, so she heads out. I went back to checking.

Not ten minutes later, a customer came up to me, ‘Do you know what’s up with that dumpster fire outside?’ My heart dropped. I went to the entrance to look, and sure enough, there was a dumpster with GIANT flames being fought by firemen.

Black Friday indeed.”

Text Source

Pizza Party

“I was a pizza delivery boy back in high school. I delivered to a house of people throwing a Super Bowl party and they asked me if I was a football fan. I told them that I was and they told me to take a break and watch some of the game with them. It was the Rams v. Patriots and I live in New England. I ended up watching a full quarter before deciding that I should probably go back to work.

I knew I would probably get fired but I was a senior in high school going away to college soon enough so I didn’t care that much. My boss asked me what happened, I told him the truth, and he kept me around. He wasn’t cool with it at first. He screamed at me and I was pretty sure he was going to fire me. After he finished yelling I asked if I was fired. He said, ‘Why? So I can hire another one of you idiots? I’ll stick with idiots I know.’

I continued working there on breaks from college and, over 15 years later, I am still friendly with my old boss. He works at the same pizza place and I go there with my family sometimes. My boys think the story is hilarious.”

Text Source

It’s On Us!

“A woman came up and told me her order, which totaled around $608. My store accepts vouchers, so she handed me a booklet of vouchers which said ‘$424 Voucher’ on the front, so I ripped that out and put it in the cash register, meaning she would have had only $183 left to pay, which she did with her credit card.

Next day I got called into the office, and my manager had that same voucher in her hand. It turns out it was the front cover of the voucher booklet and not an actual voucher. So basically, the woman got $424 off her order for free. That is a lot of money. Had to get retrained.”

Text Source

Kindness Gets You Places

“I worked as a manager in a big box sporting goods store. A customer brought in a coupon that was good for $20 off a $100 purchase, but it wasn’t good until the following day. He had about $1,000 worth of equipment, and when the coupon didn’t work, my employee running the cash register called me up to override it. When I saw why it wasn’t working, I told the customer it wasn’t good until tomorrow. He told me (in the most snobby rich person voice) that I’m, ‘gonna take it because that’s good customer service,’ and that if I don’t give it to him, he’s, ‘gonna leave all the stuff and never come back.’ I told him I understand, handed him the coupon, took his cart full of stuff behind the counter, and told him to have a nice day. While he was leaving, another customer that had the $100 minimum barely was going to use the same coupon but saw the exchange and (very nicely and genuinely) said, ‘I’ll use it next time.’ I said, just audibly enough for the jerk to hear, ‘Oh, that’s no problem I’ll take it for you.’

He called and complained to the general manager the next day.”

Text Source

Can’t You Read The Note?

“I worked at a health club. You were not allowed to keep a permanent locker but some people would bring their own locks. Every now and then we would leave a note on those lockers to ask them to remove their lock and stuff from inside the locker or we would.

So after a few weeks after the notes, there was still one locker that was not emptied. So I remove the lock and not much special inside – bathing suit, goggles, swim cap. Being young, dumb and poor I figured I would just put this stuff in the display case and try to sell it.

I do remember how awkward the conversation was when our blind client came to tell us someone stole all of her stuff from the locker room. Then the look on the face of my boss as she began to describe the items, the exact items that were right there under the glass display counter which was right under her nose.

We recovered the ‘stole’ items and I did not get fired. No clue why not.”

Text Source

Just An Accident

“A few years ago I worked in a vet clinic as an assistant. This was the first time I worked with animals in a clinical setting, so I didn’t realize I was getting hired by a place that liked to bend the rules, things like having unlicensed techs administering rabies shots (illegal).

I had worked there a few months and was doing a tooth cleaning on a pug. The way the mornings were set up was one person would clean teeth, alone with no monitoring equipment on the animal, while the doctor in the next room performed surgery, alone. If he needed help he called you in real quick, leaving the animal alone.

Well, that happened that morning combined with the phone ringing. In the shuffle, I slightly knocked the touchy oxygen machine. I wasn’t gone more than a minute but the dog asphyxiated.

The doctor gave the dog shots of something and attempted CPR. He temporarily got the heart going again but then lost him again, while I stood there frozen in horror. Then I locked myself in the bathroom and sobbed.

I was never reprimanded in any way, but I did hear him calling the owner to tell her.

That was the worst I have ever felt about something in my life. I know logically I was put in a high-risk situation. I also know if I had paid slightly more attention the dog probably would have made it.

While I didn’t get in trouble, I did end up quitting two weeks later.”

Text Source

That’ll Teach Them

“I worked in a call center for a mobile carrier company. This was 2008. I was pretty good at my job, most of my calls ended with the caller saying, ‘Thank you,’ and I’d automatically go for a cheerful, ‘You too.’

There was once this call where the user was incredibly upset at something I could not fix; he was incredibly frustrated and told me off. I, out of habit, replied, ‘You too!’ I heard my supervisor laughing loudly. He was monitoring the call live and heard everything.

He asked me to be careful with that, he found it funny to listen to, but he also said that if the call recording went through an audit, there would be nothing he could do for me. It didn’t happen, fortunately.”

Text Source

She Did It!

“I was an insurance adjuster. There was this small insurance company in the middle of nowhere that was finally getting gobbled up by a bigger company. While all of the due diligence and such was going on, they needed to operate normally, so they hired me to be their adjuster on a contract basis for one year. After that, all claims would just get absorbed into the bigger, better-enabled claims system of the bigger company.

I ended up with nothing to do most days. So I would go in, and start writing fiction. I wrote a novel after three months of full-time work with sporadic work interruption.

I even decided to try to get it published traditionally, so I printed out multiple manuscripts to ship off to agents. Well, around manuscript four, I accidentally sent it to the printer in my boss’s office instead of the one in the cubicle next to my desk.

Fortunately, the cover had a pen name and there was one woman in the office who was very open about wanting to be a writer. I guess he just assumed it was her. He walked out, flopped the manuscript on a desk and just yelled over the small cube farm ‘Emily, please only do your writing at home.’

Emily stiffened, said, ‘OKAY!’ and disappeared back to her cubicle. She probably was writing at work and just assumed he was calling her out in general. He didn’t reference the manuscript. So I picked it up quietly when no one was around and was much more careful after that.”

Text Source

It Doesn’t Hurt To Tell The Truth

“I used to work for a major bank in the corporate office. I worked in the mailroom, and we used an internal mail system to send things to other locations in other parts of the country.

I had just started this job, maybe about a couple of months in and I was young at the time, about 19 or 20. Anyway, there was this one location we’d get stuff from that kept complaining about how they’d kept losing the mailbag we’d send out to them.

These mail bags had two addresses on them that were placed on a card with the addresses on either side of the card. All you had to do once you got your stuff was take out this card, turn it around, put it back in and send it out with the internal mail and it would come back to our location the next morning.

Every day this person would take out the card, replace it with a new card that she wrote to a different address and then we wouldn’t get the bag the next morning, and she’d complain to our boss about how she wasn’t getting her bag.

So I decided to remedy the situation by writing her a strongly worded letter that was sarcastic and not nice. I didn’t cuss her out or anything like that, young me had enough sense not to do that.

My coworkers, who were older than I was at the time just said, ‘Well, if you send that out, it’s been brief but nice working with you.’

‘Pfffft,’ I said. ‘I won’t get fired for this!’ And sent it off.

The next morning comes and after my boss, who coincidentally looked like Mr. Burns from ‘The Simpsons,’ got an email from that lady complaining about how much I had hurt her feelings and made her feel stupid.

Luckily for me, my boss, despite looking like Mr. Burns, was one of the nicest guys you could ever meet. He called me over and asked if I had written that letter and I told him I had, and he lectured me about how I can’t write letters like this to other people and told me not to do that again.

I told him that I understood and that it wouldn’t happen again.

Looking back on that now, I definitely should have been fired and probably would have been had I lied. I didn’t lie though, mostly because I was quite proud of myself. I guess it was worth it though, that lady never did that again, and we didn’t have any more problems sending or receiving her mail.”

Text Source

“Act Like You Belong”

“I worked at a Nissan/Subaru dealer as a mechanic. At the end of each day, we all had to lock all of the garage doors and close for the night. I was shutting the last garage door when this guy ducked in beneath the door I was closing/locking. I just assumed he was this similar-looking guy who worked in sales since he was holding what looked to be some magnetized dealer tags.

Well, he wasn’t the guy in sales; he was a car thief, and I let him right into the garage where all of the customer keys were stored. Bosses brought me into the office the next morning and showed me the camera footage of me just letting the guy right in. While everyone was packing up, he just stood next to the customer keys perfectly still, as if our sight was movement-based. I thought it was weird that he was standing there in the dark as we shut off the lights, but I didn’t think much of it because I figured he worked here. Act like you belong, I guess.

Several cars were stolen that night.”

Text Source