Social media has connected people from all over the world. People often share and post statuses that offer a glimpse of what life is like in their shoes, but sometimes users can take things a little too far. Cancel culture can ruin lives, starting with the abrupt end of careers and livelihoods. In this segment, people share the social media post they made that got them the boot.
All stories have been edited for clarity.
Not A Daycare
“I worked at GameStop until 2010. The store was in a mall and parents would always leave their kids in the store to go do their shopping. Sometimes the children would cry, pee themselves, and I even had one crap his pants.
Parents would get mad at us for not bringing them to the bathroom. It was absolutely absurd. Other parents would scream at their kids for not being ‘distracted’ for a few hours without causing any problems.
One day I fed up and tweeted about how the store wasn’t there to babysit children and never really thought about that tweet again.
That would all change a few months later.
One day, a parent dropped a kid off at the store and beelined out the exit. About twenty minutes later, I saw a creepy looking guy outside the store. He was aiming his flip phone at the store and gawking inside. He was raising several red flags but I continued offering pointless warranties to customers while waiting for my next break. My eyes never left him.
A few moments later, I noticed him walk near the entrance of the store right where the kid was that had been abandoned. I still get chills when I remember the way he was looking at the young child. I heard him ask, ‘Where are your parents, little boy?’
The man was being way too suspicious. I had a gut feeling the man intended to harm the little boy and boy was I right. The man asked the little boy to come with him. The boy innocently began to follow the man, probably to be taken away and never heard from again. Immediately I jump into action. I dropped everything I was doing and called mall security. They were quick and managed to stop the man from kidnapping the boy before he left the mall.
The man was arrested, of course. The kid was crying and asking for his mom repeatedly. It was a miserable sight to see. Mall security tried quizzing the little boy and asking around but could not reach the boy’s mother because as it turned out, the woman went to some stores completely outside of the mall. It took two hours for his mother to come back.
Amazingly, the mother threatened to sue me, GameStop, and the mall for not ‘being aware of her child’s actions.’ The security guard that tended to her child in her absence informed her that Child Services were called before she walked away. That was the last time I saw them the mother and child.
Fast forward a few days later. The District Manager(DM) showed up in-store. Unfortunately, I was fired on the spot because the mother made a complaint about the tweet I made about how it wasn’t my job to watch children. The DM found my Twitter and informed me that my approach to the dilemma & my tweet about how, ‘Gamestop isn’t a babysitting service’ has given them suspicions that I don’t have the ‘Gamestop spirit.’
It sucked, but both the manager and district manager told me I could use them as a reference on my resume. I didn’t mind all that much about being let go and was fine with still using them as references. That was until they both lost their jobs a few weeks later.”
To Save A Life
“At my first job, I was just a worthless cashier at a small grocery store. One day, my supervisor forgot her insulin at home. Her blood sugar got so low that she was on the verge of losing consciousness. I actually have a diabetic sister, so I knew exactly what to do and sprung into action. I sat my supervisor down, bought her jelly beans, took her phone, and called her husband to bring her the insulin that she had forgotten.
I felt proud of my quick thinking that most certainly saved my supervisor’s life. That quickly faded when my supervisor expressed how ‘thankful’ she really was.
The next day, my supervisor came into work and told the store manager I was trying to make sure she didn’t get any help. I was called into the office and they showed me on camera putting her in a room and taking her phone from her. In the footage, it simply looked like I was trying to assist her, which I was.
Where I messed up was walking out of the office where there was a camera on the floor. The rest of the footage made it seem like I left her in the room to fend for herself. There was no camera in the next room to make the call.
I argued, ‘I was calling her husband. How do you think he got there?’ All of my attempts to defend myself were made in vain. The store manager wouldn’t listen to any of it because for some reason they believed that the nearly comatose diabetic knew exactly what happened over the person that got her the help she needed.
After going back and forth for what seemed like forever, I was suspended for two days. I stormed out of the store and got to my car. I was pissed off, so in my seventeen-year-old mind, I felt like I just had to vent about how unbelievable the situation was. The first thing that came to mind was to go to Facebook.
Big mistake.
I posted this passive-aggressive status:
‘Well, I guess next time I’ll just let her die.’
And that right there was the end of the line for my career as a grocery store clerk. I was allowed to come back after my suspension, but little did I know, the store manager was watching my Facebook statuses and saw my post as a threat.
Everyone involved in HR was there to fire me. I was then told I was no longer allowed to come back to the store because they thought I wanted to harm to the supervisor that started so much trouble.
So much for selfless acts.”
Sister Love
“About five years ago, my sister and I applied at a call center for a company that sells cheap meds from Canada to the United States. Both of us had worked together in the past at a different call center that used to actually take the calls for the same company, so we were both pretty familiar with the company and what they did. My sister had gotten fired from her previous position, but I stayed there another three years. My sister had also been fired from two other jobs before we both applied at this place.
Well, my sister ended up getting hired. I didn’t. We were both baffled to say the least because I had always been a better, more reliable employee. I even got a better score on the assessment than she did.
Now during the waiting period, I did recall and thought it was a little odd that they asked for the name I used for my Facebook account because they checked every prospective employee’s social media. I didn’t care because at the time I rarely ever posted on Facebook.
About six to eight months after the rejection email, I was bored one night and googled myself. I have a pretty unique last name so I figured there wasn’t much out there.
I wasn’t surprised when my Facebook was the first hit. It was the post that came up from my Facebook that was mortifying.
To my horror, the search results displayed a post I made to a Facebook group I thought was private named something along the lines of ‘Disgruntled Ex-Employee.’ In the post that was made at least 3.5 years earlier, I said, ‘I’m not disgruntled, but that place is the crappiest of all call centers. Everyone there is a bunch of assholes.’
I instantly knew this had to be the reason I didn’t get hired. I deleted that post so fast my cursor left a trail of smoke.I also made sure I hadn’t made any others and left the group entirely. From then on I refused to say anything stupid on the internet that was directly tied to my name. I wasn’t letting anything like that ruin any more prospective job opportunities.
I’m actually glad I didn’t get my job. I now have a great job with the police and I have security clearance.”
Scarves Galore!
“So here’s a funny and immature story:
I worked for a place that had a gift shop. Inside this gift shop were the ugliest, unwearable scarves on the face of the planet. I was younger and didn’t really care about the company or any possible consequences.
One day out of boredom, I started a movement called ‘Scarf Tuesday’. Basically, a few of my coworkers and I would meet up at about nine in the morning every Tuesday. Each of my coworkers would pick out and wear a scarf. Then we each took a silly picture that we posted on Facebook. These photos started getting likes and people seemed to love them, so we kept going.
A few months later, I got pulled into my boss’s office. On the wall, I kid you not, were at least twenty of the ‘Scarf Tuesday’ pictures with the faces blurred out.
My boss looked me up and down and shook his head before he asked me, to this day, the funniest question I’ve ever been asked:
‘What do you see here?’
I smiled and told him it looked like employees wearing scarves.
My boss let out an over-exaggerated sigh and said, ‘While I do find this funny, this is unacceptable and disappointing behavior coming from you.’
Apparently, somebody watching the cameras wasn’t happy and watched us for weeks piling evidence. It was me along with over a dozen of my other coworkers that had similar meetings in the next few days.
I didn’t get canned right away because we stopped doing ‘Scarf Tuesday’, but the retaliation was awful. I started being blamed for just about everything that went wrong before I got fired.
Looking back at the situation, it was foolish. I fell into a deep depression for a few months because I was unemployed. It helped me grow into a man though and now I have a full-time managerial job making twice as much.
I’ll never regret what happened because it brought me on a path that led to a better life.”
Anyone Hiring?
“I was working for a company that, in my opinion, was underpaying everyone. A guy I worked side by side with had only six months of experience over me yet was making twice what I was making.
Fed up, I was looking for other jobs. I was hoping to find just another part-time job to make ends meet. Despite the low pay, I still liked the job. So, I made a post to Facebook and asked,
‘Does anybody know of any part-time jobs in graphic design? Freelance work is also up my alley!’
In the comments, someone asked if I was interested in full-time positions, too. I said I was if the pay was high enough. because, lets face it, I didn’t like the job THAT much to turn down more money. So I made a comment in the thread about how, ‘[current job] doesn’t pay me as much as I’d like. Maybe I should have negotiated for more before working here.’
Three days later, I was called into my boss’ office. He pulled up a screen shot from my Facebook in an email and then asked me what I meant by the post. I told him I was looking for side work because I needed a bit more income.
Here is where it gets stupid.
My boss realized after arguing with me, that he had no case because it was totally in my rights to look for a second job.
After realizing his argument wasn’t working, my boss switched his game up. He then told me I had been called into the office because I was scrolling Facebook on company time. Yes I was at work when I made my post, BUT I was on my lunch break when I posted, from my phone, on my network, not company WiFi.
From the position I was sitting at in front of my boss’ desk, I happened to look at his computer and noticed the profile picture of who had taken the screenshots. It was a woman who worked right across from me. and the time stamp from her phone was 1:27 PM on the same day.
I raised a point, ‘Hold on, you’re disciplining me for not doing anything wrong, yet, the person you are taking ‘evidence’ from was ON FACEBOOK, on their PHONE during WORK HOURS? Is this not the exact reason you’re talking to me in the first place?’
My boss, being the extremely competent, and extremely mature boss/CEO/President that he was said, ‘Well, I don’t know how to handle this, so why don’t you just clean out your desk…’
So, I cleaned my desk out and left. Then to top it off, the stupid woman who sent the screenshots grinned at me as I collected my things.
I’d like to tell you that I told her out loud to kick rocks, but of course, I didn’t.
The CEO then had the balls to tell me on the way out, ‘Sorry I had to do that, I still think you do grade-A work, and you can still use me as a reference…'”
It Was Just A Picture
“I was working as a bartender and server for a restaurant. The assistant manager was a petty tyrant and treated the staff like garbage. I had made several complaints about him to the general manager and the owner, but they refused to do anything about it.
I was done with this place. I had already begun my search for a new job, when one day I was barrending and a very young looking girl came in. She handed me her out of state ID and looked around nervously. Immediately I could tell it was a fake.
I politely told the girl I wouldn’t be able to serve her alcohol, and explained the state regulation that we did not have to accept out of state IDs. The girl was actually very understanding and there was no scene or issue.
Her other friends arrive and they were seated at a table somewhere else. I promptly informed their server about the fake ID just in case. It didn’t take long for the assistant manager, who had been drinking Bloody Marys at the bar next door all morning and napping in the office came over.
He then told me I didn’t know what a fake ID looked like. The assistant manager then added that I didn’t have the right to refuse service and told me how stupid I was for thinking as such.
He then went on to tell me I had to serve the girl whether I liked it or not. I informed him that I had the legal right to refuse service, and he couldn’t force me to do anything.
Later that night, I went home and posted on Facebook about my day. I then included a photo of when I was managing a liquor store holding a device of a medieval shield made out of all the fake IDs we had confiscated in one year. I was also wearing a crown.
The next day, I was called in by the assistant manager and let go for ‘refusing to cooperate with management.'”
The Perfect Environment
“I was fired from Comcast because of a tweet I made.
The story begins with someone on my timeline posting an article about Comcast customer service. Someone replied to him saying, ‘Wow, Comcast actually has customer service? Lol!’
Now at the time I was working in their customer service department. Without thinking, I replied to the tweet and said, ‘Yup, we do. We complain about management as much as you do.’
I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I tweeted from my personal account that was not in any way tied to Comcast. Still, Comcast did not like my comment.
Despite me having zero personal details on Twitter, they still somehow figured out the comment was from me. I was then fired for suggesting the employees are unhappy all day at work.
Seriously.
The best I statement from the conference I can recall was: ‘You said the employees aren’t happy. We can’t have people suggesting the employees are in any way unhappy with management, it makes us look bad as a company. Comcast has worked extremely hard to get the reputation it currently has and things like this will make people see Comcast in a negative light, which is unacceptable. We want people to understand we are the perfect working environment.’
They also implied they were getting their legal team to investigate further to see if they should start a libel case against me. Don’t worry. Nothing came up it.
The weirdest part was, the woman firing me seemed completely unaware the general public hates Comcast.”
Out of Proportion
“In 2009 I was a manager at a store fixture plant for a large home improvement retail chain in the upper Midwest. I was having a tough time at this job mainly because I had to relocate with my wife four hours away from everything we had ever known to a very small rural community in the middle of nowhere. Everyone at this plant had pretty much grown up with each other, so I was seen as some big-city outsider.
Anyway, after about a year, I had an employee who started having chest pains at work. We ended up calling an ambulance. It was difficult to watch. To let off steam, I thought it would be okay to post to Facebook, ‘Had to call an ambulance for someone at work today. Fun.’
To clarify, I didn’t actually think the situation was ‘fun.’ It sucked and what I made was a sarcastic remark I posted under stress.
A few days later, one of the employees, a young woman, started behaving extremely rude to me. She always had a bit of a nasty attitude but for some reason her behavior worsened. When I brought her into my office to talk to her about what was going on with her, she flipped out on me with foul language and raised her voice at me.
I should have fired her, but I was too nice and decided to suspend her instead. Again, it was hard to deal with because I don’t like confrontation. I went to Facebook and posted,’Had to suspend someone at work today. Fun.’
In retrospect, I should have never posted this, but I was under a lot of stress and this was before companies started to enact rules about social media posts.
A few days after the post, I was called into the general manager’s office. We had a good relationship, so I didn’t think anything about it. The first thing he did was show me a printed copy of posts I made from my Facebook page. He then explained to me the woman I suspended found them, printed them out, and brought them to work when she came back to show everyone how much of an jerk I was.
The general manager then said he was going to have to write me up. I was fine with it and didn’t protest when he told me to take the rest of the day off to cool down and delete these comments. However, it was a different employee that took it upon themselves to email these comments to the CEO, COO, and the President of the Company.
The next morning when I got there, the general manager was waiting for me, explained what happened, and said the legal department advised him to fire me.
It was all blown out of proportion and it cost me my job. I was young, stressed out, unhappy in life, and stupid. I don’t think it should have cost me my job, but I got over all that a long time ago.”
I Meant What I Said
“Something I posted on Twitter got my coworker and I fired.
I worked in retail doing a fairly easy job. One night, I was closing with this other dude and the night was just about over. The store closed and we were waiting for our manager to release us for the night.
My coworker and I were standing around and chatting before he decided to lie on the floor and make stupid faces. We were both pretty young and dumb. I thought it was funny so I took a picture. A short while after, we were sent home after a night’s work.
Later that night, I posted the picture to Twitter.
I’m a big hockey fan. I was annoyed because my shift I had to work made me miss a good game I was feeling bold, so I took to Twitter to voice my displeasure.
‘SCREW YOU, [insert company name here].’
A couple of months later I got called into the manager’s office. With a straight face, he told me he had to terminate me because someone at corporate found my account and saw the picture with the caption that I had posted.
I was fired immediately, but my co-worker that I told you about? They saw the picture of him as well but instead of firing him, they decided to suspend him for a week. We thought everything was fine, but once he came back after the suspension was over, he was fired on the spot.”
The Hungover Retail Worker
“I worked at a ‘high-end’ toy store at a fancy shopping plaza. We shared the mall with Louis Vuitton, and Tiffany & Co. Our store was across from two separate jewelry stores. There was a lot of bored doctors, lawyers’ and CEO’s reluctantly appeasing their children’s cries to go to the toy store. There were also a lot of nannies tasked with distracting children while parents got pampered at the spa down the hall.
I was about twenty-four when the incident happened. My job was only supposed to be a holiday position, but my manager loved me and asked me to come on full time. I was finally employed after leaving college with an art degree at the height of the recession.
I battled to be the ‘Mayor’ of Foursquare and was the mayor of the toy store. Yes, I am aware of how dumb this was.
One day, I sauntered into work and checked into Foursquare, commenting for all to see: ‘Hungover in a sea of screaming children and their asshole parents.’
A week or two after that post, my manager called me in on the verge of tears. She loved me but shared with me that corporate found the post and had a zero-tolerance policy towards negative social media use, especially while on the clock. My manager then said she fought to keep me but had no choice.
She also told me, ‘This is a great learning experience.’
It was. I’ve since always kept my social life out of my professional life. I deleted Foursquare less than a week later. And I’ve always kept my social media profiles locked down. I’m twenty-nine now and recently moved to the UK as a company’s marketing director. I still have a hangover, but I haven’t called our clients a bunch of assholes. Yet.”