These former employees are dishing on the pettiest of reasons, as to why their boss decided to give them the boot. (Content has been edited for clarity)
Idiot Boss Lost His Phone In Vegas And Blamed His New Hire
“I had just started at this company that specializes in web design. While helping a client fix their homepage that crashed, my boss sent an email stating he lost his cell phone in Vegas, and I had to find it by the end of the day. To add to this, he was super controlling and notorious for being a jerk. While trying to balance finding this phone and assisting the client, he kept peeking in my office and asking if I found it.
When I updated him that I’d been contacting everywhere he went and was dealing with a client’s needs, his reaction was, ‘That’s not how we do things here! We don’t try, we do!’
I found the phone somehow in just two days. I came in the next Monday and was let go because I didn’t find his phone fast enough, and the client was upset it took so long to get their page back up.
What. The. Heck.”
But Someone Else Sent Out That E-mail…
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“I was to take data sent in from the field and then e-mail it to various people both inside and outside my company. For several weeks, I had been having trouble with the people in the field sending the data on time. I informed their bosses several times, but since nothing changed, I assumed the bosses didn’t give a care, so I stopped caring.
One evening, someone from another company calls and asks where the e-mail was, and why is it late. I told him about how the data was late and how I complained, but no one listened. The man from the other company said: ‘Maybe they’ll listen if I complain!’ (BTW: This was a friendly conversation. We were both laughing the whole time. No one was angry). The man then proceeds to send an e-mail to all the managers in BOTH our companies asking why I didn’t have the data yet. Unfortunately, he was an older guy so he used a 20-point font and all caps – So to everyone reading the e-mail, it was some guy screaming.
Chaos ensued. From what I understand, the CEO of the company got that e-mail, who then called the VP of my division, who then called my boss. They wanted to know why things had ‘escalated’ and why I didn’t have the numbers. In my head, I started thinking, ‘NOW you give a care?!’ Two days later, I was put on suspension and during the first day of my suspension, my boss called and fired me over the phone. This was after working for this company for six years and having ZERO write-ups or complaints.”
Accusations Against Stealing From The Cash Register?
“My boss thought I was stealing from the register. He never confronted me about it, never even actually fired me. Just stopped giving me hours.
Every week, I’d call in and be told I had no hours scheduled that week. Nope, no hours. No one ever even said the boss let me go. They just stopped giving me hours. I only found out after running into one of the managers in a bar five years later.”
Papa John’s Manager Wanted To Keep The Store Open During An Ice Storm?
“I used to manage a Papa John’s in North Carolina, in the late 90’s.
There was a major ice storm coming through, but the district manager told us we had to stay open. The DM eventually told me that I could send the drivers home since two of them had already gotten into wrecks, but that I had to keep the store open. My girlfriend got into a wreck and when I called the DM to tell him I had to leave so that I could go pick her up, he told me he couldn’t get there to relieve me (even though he only lived about 1.5 miles away) because the roads were too dangerous, but he still would not let me close the store. Finally, the fire department stopped at the store because they noticed it was still open.
They told me that they were closing almost all of the roads in our town and ordered me to close for safety reasons. When I told the DM, he said that I was required to stay there and keep the store open. I even had the firemen talk to him on the phone, but he told me that if I left the store, I would be fired for insubordination. I left.”
It’s A Blessing He Got Fired From That ‘Garbage’ Job
“I worked as a temp in a garbage dump when I was unemployed. My dad’s friend was the foreman/manager whatever. I had to work the night-shift from 8 pm until 4 am. My job was to tell the incoming garbage trucks where to dump their trash and help out the other gentleman there with the trash compactor. I also had to shoo away the opossums, raccoons, and rats. I was paid $8.75 an hour, but I had to pay the temp agency a fee for giving me the job.
I am not a night owl. I prefer to sleep from 10 pm until 6 in the morning. I am an old man in a 24-year-old’s body. I was three weeks into the job and my internal clock was still adjusting to staying up all night and sleeping all day. I finally got the hang of it and after a shift (where I had to work overtime, until 5:30 in the morning), my boss called me and told me that he just switched me to the daytime hours at 6:30 am. Mind you, I had just fallen asleep at 6 am. I said that I think it is unfair to switch my hours at any given notice and expect me to work essentially a double-shift without any warning so that I could prepare.
He fired me over the phone. I never looked back. It turns out that later that month, the brand new Jaguar was repossessed and his wife left him. So that’s something.”
Blue Shirt Drama At The Restaurant
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“I started working at a new restaurant in town a couple of months ago. They told the waitstaff to buy a blue shirt as part of our uniform. The managers never gave us an example of the color blue they wanted, they just wanted it to be blue.
Fast forward a few days and I bring in a blue shirt. They said it was too dark and that I would have to buy a lighter one. No problem. I go back to the store and purchase a slightly lighter shirt. Still too dark. So I go back a third time, and just to mess with them, bought the lightest shirt I could possibly find. The managers said the third shirt was perfect and thus I began wearing it as part of my uniform.
I wore the same shirt for three weeks (washing it of course) without a problem until one day I spilled something on it before work and decided to wear another shirt out of my closet instead. Well, the managers had gotten so used to the light blue shirt I had been wearing, that the one I decided to wear that day appeared to be too dark. They told me I had to wear the light blue shirt the next day or I’d be written up. So I come back the next day, wearing the same light blue shirt I had been wearing for three weeks without so much as a peep from management, AND SUDDENLY IT WAS TOO FREAKING LIGHT.
It was literally the same shirt. The same dang shirt. For three weeks, it was not an issue and suddenly my shirt was too light for their liking. They told me if I came into work without a proper uniform one more time I’d be fired. I wasn’t about to get fired over a shirt, so I quit before I did. Best decision I ever made. The restaurant was a joke and has been failing ever since I left. If management worried less about the color of shirts of their employees and more about getting food out of the kitchen on time, they’d be a lot more successful.”
That Customer Was Acting Very Suspiciously
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“I worked at a fast food place with a double drive-thru. We had four customers in a row tell us that one of the drivers in line had gotten out of his vehicle and gotten a weapon out of the back of his truck camper and got back in his vehicle with it on the dash and was acting suspiciously. Along with the four who warned us, there were several who just drove off.
As the manager, I called the police and let them know of the situation and they came and checked the guy out. As it turns out, the folks had mistaken a large flashlight for a weapon and he was completely understanding. However, once the District Manager was notified, I was fired on the spot. I have often wondered what would have happened if had been someone planning on robbing the place.”
Harsh Realities Of Working At A Pet Store…
“I worked at a big-box pet store in the marine and fish department. An important thing to know about me is that my mother was a special constable – she was an animal cruelty investigator. Obviously, I was pretty up on the whole animals rights thing.
An interesting reality about pet stores is that they sell mice as food for other animals. Whatever, that’s some circle of life stuff. One of the by-products of this is that sometimes mice come in and are diseased. If there’s one sick mouse, all of the other mice it was shipped with are killed.
So what you’re supposed to do is bring the little buggers to a vet hospital where they’re euthanized in a CO2 chamber. It turns out that the lazy assistant manager was putting them in a box in the freezer, which if you’re a warm-blooded animal is among the worst ways to die. I found a box of them in the freezer – they had torn each other apart while they panicked.
So I called in a cruelty complaint that resulted in thousands of dollars of fines that got the assistant manager fired.
Strike one.
So, it also turns out that when a fish has a disease, all the fish are killed and the tank is rinsed with a few liters of bleach. So when you want the bleach out, you put a hose to feed water in, and then you suck-start a siphon to get a flow-through. I was doing this on a ladder, lost my footing a bit and accidentally got a huge shot of straight bleach down my gullet.
It turns out that it’s not that bad. I had a sore throat and was nauseous, but went to the hospital anyway. This resulted in a health and safety inspection that brought on close to $20,000 in fines due to safety violations and resulted in the firing of the manager.
Strike two.
Strike three came when I got hold of a label maker and made multiple copies of this:
‘Please, you are the only one who can help me. I am being held here against my will, forced to perform tricks for food and beaten when I won’t perform.’
Then I stuck those to all of the cages in the ‘livestock’ department – where they keep all of the dogs, cats, rabbits, and parrots.
This was discovered when someone interested in spending a few grand on the Macaw spotted it and stormed out in a rage.
I got fired for ‘too many incidents in too short of a span of time.’
I might have earned it a little.”
He Didn’t Get Any Warnings Before Being Fired From Best Buy
“I was the Home Theater Supervisor at Best Buy.
Guy comes in around February, orders a Sony W-series 60-inch TV (only the XBR was higher end at the time) Pays and says they’re currently building their house, but wanted to take advantage of this sale, can we please put in a bogus delivery date and he’ll call us as soon as he knows.
Sure, of course, we do that kind of stuff all the time for install jobs. Also buys surround sound, installation while the house is being built, the works. The ticket is over $15,000, a big day in the rural Best Buy I worked in. Made the install budget for the month. The manager bought me drinks.
Come to the end of April, he calls and says: ‘Hey we had some issues with the foundation, all fixed now, please deliver the TV and have them come finish the install.’ I set it up, TV gets delivered, installers go out the next day.
I get a call on my day off from the installers: ‘Dude, the TV is dead out of the box. Won’t turn on at all.’ I tell them to finish everything else they can, take the busted one back to the store with them and block off their tomorrow afternoon, have the guy come in first thing in the morning and I’ll take care of it.
Guy comes in the next day. ‘I noticed the XBR is now only $1,000 more instead of $1,500, can I swap it out?’ Naturally, I say yes. He pays the difference, the installers take the new TV out that afternoon, install and all is well.
The NEXT day, the manager calls me in and asks why I returned a TV 60 days outside the return window. I explained the situation and that the customer had possession of the 24 for only 24 hours and it would be unreasonable of him to ask him to contact Sony about it.
‘Tough luck, you’re fired.’ No warnings, no strikes, just gone.
Turns out that particular manager was running a scam and got caught a few years later, reselling stuff he bought with his discount on eBay for only minor MSRP discounts. He was trying to look hard on leadership to avoid attention.
And now I make more than he ever did.”
She Learned To Not Rat On Her Coworkers After That Incident…
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“About 10 years ago, I worked at some small town pizza shop. Started as a deliverer and then did dining room/delivery over the summer for more hours. The owner’s wife would help out a lot as it was kind of a ‘mom and pop’ type place and during the slow hours, we would just make small talk or do crosswords/sudoku in the paper or whatever.
Well, there were a couple shady immigrants in the kitchen. Paid in cash, no papers kind of situation. Great workers and great people though. One day there was a new cook in the back and she carpooled home with one of the other cooks. I remember the next day the wife came in to help, it had been a while since I had seen her so I was just making small talk. I asked something along the lines of, ‘Oh is that new cook Jose’s cousin or girlfriend?’ and she’s like: ‘What new cook?’
Well, she asked the owner who she was and how she shouldn’t be hiring people without telling him anymore (evidently this had happened in the past). They screamed at each other a little bit and the owner threw the toothpick container off the cashier stand and the wife stormed off and left. The owner just had me sit in a booth the rest of the night while he did all the tables. I was 16 and didn’t really know what the heck to do, I didn’t wanna walk out as the job was good money but at the same time, I was mad I was staying on the clock and it was a BUSY night and the owner was running around all hectic.
Anyway, at the end of the night, he asked for me to take some time off, ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’
I’ve never been ‘fired’ from any place since. I’ll occasionally think back on that and wonder if they still own that pizza place.”
His Grocery Store Crush Got Him In Trouble?
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“16-year-old me worked at a grocery store as a bagging clerk. I had a crush on one of the cashiers. One night, I am working the 4-10 shift and the cashier I have a crush on is off work and buying some of her own home groceries. In addition to her, there are probably five other customers in the store and none of these people are at the checkout line. There was also another bag clerk there, but he was in the back on break (if I remember correctly).
Anyhow, our store policy was to always ask the customer if they need help out to their car with the groceries, regardless of age or gender. So I jump at this chance to ask the cute cashier if she needs help out to her car. She says yes. I am so excited (doesn’t seem like a big deal to do this now, but when I was 16 this was the most awesome event for me ever). So I finish bagging her food and start to push the cart out when the store manager screams at me from behind his counter: ‘Hey! Where do you think you’re going? Get back here, she can take her own stuff out!’ It’s worth mentioning right now that the store manager is in his mid 40’s and one of those guys who was wasted with the power his position in the store gave him. Just an overall jerk. I ignore him and proceed to walk the cashier out.
We chat for a bit and I try my best to flirt (by the way, she was in college so there was no chance of me going out with her. Ever. She was also super cute). We end the conversation and she goes home. At this point, I am super happy and content with the ongoings of what just happened.
However, on my way in, I see the store manager coming out of the store and walking towards me. He looks angry. He starts yelling at me that I need to listen and I am in trouble, blah blah blah. I am getting worked up and starting to get mad as well. But then, the jerk grabs my arm and tries to pull me back towards the store. As soon as he grabs me, I scream a quick, ‘Let go of me!’ Nothing more and nothing less. He stares at me and then states that he needs to see me in the office now.
We head to the store and he calls the other manager who is there and they both head into the office with me. The store manager who grabbed me explains what happened to the other manager (the whole while, I am sitting staring at them).
Finally, the main manager explains that I have two options. I can either go on suspension until they officially fire me (he told me very confidentially that I was going to be fired when I came back) OR I can quit right there and then. So I stood up, said screw you to the manager that grabbed me and apologized to the other manager for me being rude in front of him (the other manager was super cool, but did not have as much power as the jerk one), then grab my skateboard and leave.”
His Slow Pace Was Not Appreciated At Wendy’s…
“I got fired from a Wendy’s after two weeks for two reasons:
I didn’t learn how to make sandwiches fast enough for them after two days. The manager even tore down the sandwich building guide right in front of me when I was looking at it and said to me: ‘You should know these by now.’ Really? Even worse, they had a bratty blonde chick watch over me and yell at me whenever I had trouble knowing the procedures. This torment was not worth $7.25/hour.
I’m pretty sure that my manager was not only sexist, but also racist. I was a 20-year-old white college guy trying to get some spending money for the Fall 2012 semester, and my manager was an older black woman. What leads me to believe that she was like was not only where the majority of my coworkers were black (I was one of three white employees), a majority of them were also female (I was one of four male workers, one other guy and myself were white). I got along with my coworkers (except my manager and the brat).
Funny thing is, I put up with a sexist manager before at a previous job (another story entirely), and they never really fired me; they just stopped giving me hours. I still have my Wendy’s shirts, hat, and nametag. They wanted those back. They’re not getting them back.
Only made $75 that summer. At least I got free clothes.”
They Demoted His Position At Home Depot And That Wasn’t Even The Worst Of It
“The dumbest excuse I was ever given for being fired was from a large orange colored home improvement store (Home Depot). The reason given was that I ‘didn’t seem like I wanted to work there.’
A little backstory: I had worked for them for about six years before leaving for all of two months because I thought I wanted to move to a different part of the country. After realizing that I hated Buffalo as much as my hometown, I moved back and stepped down from being a department supervisor to a part-time sales associate. Over the period of four months, I applied not once but TWICE for my old supervisor position. While applying for this position (and getting nowhere) I was being worked 36-40 hours a week in not only my assigned department but the one I used to supervise! And I was being told that since I was so knowledgeable, I should be helping the people they’re hiring for my old job! Thinking that I had to do it to get back to my old job, I just shut my mouth and taught my ‘boss’ all there was to know about the position. Come to the end of my temporary hiring period, and I get walked back to the office to be let go by the store manager. And my favorite part was how despite feeding me lines of nonsense, he still had the gall to give me his number and tell me to reapply next year.”
It Was Way Too Unorganized And Unfair At The Call Center
“I worked for a call center and our call queue was getting downsized.
They announced three months in advance that: ‘If you want to change to a different team to apply now, we are following this criteria: “A, B, C” and if you don’t meet those you will be fired.’ I met all three requirements so I didn’t feel the need to change jobs. Three months later I get pulled into the office and was informed that I was being fired. I asked why when I met all the requirements that they asked and they said, ‘Well we’re not going by that anymore.’
So I asked if I could transfer to another team to which they said it was too late. So I then asked, ‘So if the calls aren’t there and I met the requirements, and you won’t let me transfer, you are laying me off right?’
To which they said: ‘No, it shows as a termination because it looks better in our paperwork that way.’
I was one week away from one year and getting benefits. If anybody asks me if they should apply there, I say you are better off working at Walmart.”