Everyone has a dark moment now and then, something they did that they’re not exactly proud of. But what if one of our huge mistakes happens on our first day or week at a new job? And what if that mistake gets us fired on the spot? Well, these Redditors know what that looks like—and they’ve shared the fastest ways their new co-workers got sacked on the job. Watch out: These ones sting.
1. Balls Out
As a teenager, I worked at a bowling alley. Within an hour, a new girl was fired on the spot for dropping a ball on the foot of a complaining patron.
2. Honesty Isn’t The Best Policy
When I was 18, I got a job at a grocery store along with three others, and we all started training together. On the first day, we were training in the evening, and one girl asked to go home because she said her head hurt. They said fine and she wandered off and clocked out. Then we watched her do something supremely stupid.
She went to grab a grocery cart and started filling it with liquor. The store manager walked over and asked her if she was having a party. She said yes. Didn't even try to come up with an excuse. Just, "Yeah, I am, so I needed to leave early on my first day." Well, he fired her.
3. Dress For The Job You Want
This was a moving company, in the mid-west. Most people didn’t make it through the first week, as they will hire literally anyone who can pass a substance test. Turnover was really bad, but I guess that’s the nature of the job. Still, I'll never forget Jeremy. Jeremy was 18 and did not apply for colleges, so his parents made him get a job.
He was hired as a mover, as is everyone. He shows up the first day to roll-call in a full suit and tie asking where his desk is. This was a group full of former convicts, high school dropouts, and generally rough dudes trying to make a living. We laughed so hard. Jeremy went right back home. Next day, Jeremy's mom shows up to give the manager a piece of her mind. We laughed even harder.
4. Casual Mondays
I worked for a small company in LA for many years. I was on the board that interviewed for a new intern for the recreation department. We went through the process, made our choice, and made the job offer to a nice, smart girl fresh out of college. She was a little bit of a hippy, casual, relatable, but it was all fine, and all accepted.
Well, the girl showed up with her gigantic pet PYTHON wrapped around her neck on the first day. She took “casual” to a whole new level, right back out the door. We hired candidate #2 instead.
5. Can’t Play With The Big Boys
I worked at a Doggie Day Care. For group play, dogs were put in rooms according to size, and we would rotate through the rooms during our shifts. They hired a new girl and on her first day, she went into the big dog room and cried hysterically because she was afraid of them. Unsurprisingly, I don’t think she made it two hours.
6. Special Sauce
A friend from high school got fired from his job at McDonald's after his long-time crush complained of having mounds of hair in her Big-Mac. With such a disturbing complaint on hand, the manager decided to take a look at the CCTV—and made a chilling discovery. He found that my friend had walked to the back, reached down his pants, and pulled some hair out and placed it in the sandwich.
He got fired on the spot, then came over to my house and told me the story. He was told to leave my house on the spot. People do weird things when they’re in love.
7. Artistic License
I worked in the signage industry for many years. One day, some guy walks in looking for work and claiming to be a sign writer. My boss asks him if he has brushes, and he says absolutely. So my boss says ok, we need someone to go and paint a 5-meter logo on the wall at the gym. It's basically a couple of circles with Helvetica text in between and a stylized dancing man.
Pretty basic stuff. We give him the layout and the paint and off the guy goes. Four or five hours later, we get a call from the owner of the gym. He tells my boss to come and fetch this guy before he has some kind of breakdown inside the gym. We get there, and he has literally got two tiny little artists’ brushes. A number 1 and a number 4 or something, and he is trying to freehand this freaking 5-meter circle with them.
I almost cracked a rib trying not to laugh at this guy. He was sweating bullets trying to get this done. No tape, no chalk line. Not even a normal 2-inch paintbrush. Just this little 4mm round paintbrush and he's painting this thick circle by eye. We laughed about that for days.
8. Not In The Job Description
I was the person who got fired. Many moons ago, when I was a kid, I got a job at Wal-Mart. The position was called "stockman," so I assumed (incorrectly) that I would be stocking shelves. On my first day, during my first five minutes, my boss handed me a normal-sized broom. My response was: "On what shelf does this go?"
He told me to go sweep the entire parking lot, which was roughly the size of a football field. I laughed heartily into his confused face. Oh, did I mention it was raining? So again, he tells me to go sweep the parking lot and not to come back in until it was complete. I just kept laughing and said, "screeewwww that!" I was fired by about my 10th minute, which is still too long to work for that place.
9. Looking For Trouble
This happened last week. This new girl is hired, and right off the bat she starts telling me that she regrets taking this job, despite being unemployed for four months, because there are so many new people so it must be a bad job because of the high turnover. For one, this is not really true. A large company just bought us, and they are hiring more people because we have more business.
She then tells us all about how it’s her birthday and she’s going drinking after work. Well, she does a no call no show the next day, which is her third day. We all assume she quit. But the next day, she comes in and starts just trying to work like nothing happened. The supervisor asked what happened, and she said she got in a minor car accident.
He asked why she didn’t call, and she said she doesn't have a cell phone…despite being on her cell phone constantly in the office. He decided to give her one more chance, but gave her a lecture about how she needs to communicate properly about missing work, and one more incident will be an automatic firing. Next day, no call no show.
10. Bon Voyage
My co-worker didn't show up the first day, second day, or third day. This means that I had to work a double shift for three days straight. Not fun, I’ll tell you that much. As it happened, I answered the phone when he finally “called in” on the fourth day of his absence. That’s when I learned his ridiculous reason for ditching.
He said, "I'm going to be honest with you, I've been in Orlando. My parents paid for a small vacation as a reward for me getting the job. Would it be okay to start next week instead of this week?"
11. Cruel And Unusual Punishment
I worked in a grocery store for a while. The new guy took a lobster out of the tank and removed the elastic bands on its claws, then proceeded to put it back in the tank. The thing murdered all the other lobsters in the tank.
12. Some Men Just Want To Watch The World Burn
I spent my summers in college working as a laborer for a construction company. Anyway, we were doing a bunch of renovation in an active hospital, so noise and dust were a huge concern. We were a small crew and just starting renovations on an area with a super tight schedule, so the company hired a subcontractor for some of the work.
Enter these two clowns who show up to do some demolition work. Foreman gives them the talk about how they may be used to doing things a certain way, but this is an active hospital so he'd rather the work take longer than for them to make a huge mess or a lot of noise. An hour later, we apparently got multiple complaints about the noise and the mess.
So the foreman calls me up and says to go over there and clean up NOW, and that he'd be by shortly to see what the heck was going on. These dudes had dust and broken wall everywhere. I could hear them half way down the hall, just smashing away at everything without a care in the world. But it was about to get so much worse.
The foreman shows up and we walk into the room to witness this dude standing on a pile of rubble, swinging a sledgehammer over his head at a brick wall that he's removed the bottom from. Somehow, the rest of this wall is still hanging from the ceiling, I have no idea how. Guy wasn't even wearing a hard hat, apparently oblivious that at any moment that wall might give way and crush him.
The foreman lost his mind on these guys. Kicked them out immediately, and got on the phone with their company and told them he didn't want to see these guys on our site ever again. Lots of choice four-letter words were used in the call, and he even threatened to fire the subcontractor entirely and get someone else to do the work.
13. Heads Will Roll
This guy got fired just three hours into his first shift. He lost it serving an annoying Karen customer in a grocery shop, and his response was legendary. He threw a cabbage at her. The manager came and told him to go home because he was finished there. He wasn't surprised. I was standing next to him; that was an entertaining day.
14. Fake It Till You Break It
This engineer my company hired was a PhD and really hit it off with the guys in management. We had some female colleagues working under his direction, and they said he was an absolute jerk, demeaned their work, and blamed them for everything. Now, my colleagues were excellent formulation chemists, and he was brought on to lead a new formulation project and it wasn’t working.
He would tell them how to do it and it never worked, and then he kept blaming them for doing it wrong. My co-worker got fed up and called him on it during a big meeting. They even had a prepared presentation describing what they tried, how thoroughly they tried it, why what he proposed would never work, and an alternative solution.
The guy was so angry, but the management guys were extremely knowledgeable and started asking him questions, and it was clear he couldn’t answer. That’s when all his lies unraveled. Turns out, his wife has a PhD too, and she pretty much did all of his degree work for him, as they were both from a culture where women are not treated equally.
He knew absolutely nothing. Not only that, but once everyone got to talking, it was clear just how massive a jerk this guy was. Sadly, my colleagues had to deal with this for months before everything was said and done.
15. Dine And Dash
I work in construction. We had two new hires who were friends and starting on the same day. The boss told one to take a coffee order and come back. He took everyone's money, then said he needed his friend to go with him because it was a big order. They never came back.
16. Fast Food, Big Lies
This was just a summer job at a fast food place. We had a new girl start, and within two days it was apparent she was an idiot and everyone knew it. You could already see the manager questioning his decision. Then, on her third day of work, she said she couldn't come in because her mom was in a car accident and in the hospital.
Turns out that's an easy thing to disprove in a relatively small town.
17. Under New Management
I owned a construction business, and we recently hired three new employees due to expansion. I didn't get to meet them yet, as my business partner was the one who interviewed them. He also watched them get started on the first day and would check in on them most mornings. Along with the new hires, we promoted one of our best workers as manager to oversee them.
So after a few days, I noticed that we were behind schedule on the job. This wasn't all that surprising because we had the new hires, but I decided it was best to go in and check it out to make sure everything was going well. So, I call up my manager and tell him to go to a different site and that I will take over at the place with the new guys.
I arrive at the site a half an hour late due to traffic, and everyone is already hard at work. In fact, they are working efficiently and correctly on everything. I asked them a few questions about what they are doing and so on and get all the right answers. I figured the delay was just the first two days of learning and am very pleased that everything was picked up and seemed to go well.
Now, it is important that at this point I didn't actually introduce myself and nobody asked who I was, so it seems everyone just assumed that I was just another worker from the company they never met before. So, two hours before we are supposed to finish for the day, I discover something that makes all the problems make sense.
A guy comes over and says, "Hey, just so you know, we're all gonna head out now, but clock in that we worked the whole day. The manager allows it, and the owners never notice." So that is the story of how I fired three new hires on the very first day that I met them... and also how I had to fire our best worker. Not a good day for me.
18. Temptation Calls
I was hired to do tech support in a call center. On our first day of training, there were about 30 of us in a room, and we each had our own computer. The instructor said it was okay to use the computer for personal stuff during down time, but the only rules were no games and, obviously, no adult fare when it came to videos.
One guy got fired before lunchtime, because he just couldn't resist the videos.
19. Mirror, Mirror
This guy got hired, went through training and all that jazz. First day on the floor, he disappeared for three hours and then came back very not sober. A manager found him in the bathroom products aisle, staring at himself in the mirror. After firing the guy promptly, said manager looked at the security cameras. The footage revealed a bizarre truth.
The guy had been staring at himself for at least 30 minutes before he came along.
20. New Guy In Town
I was fired on my second day as a line cook at a Mitzel’s Restaurant in Washington State back in the 90s. Turns out, I was hired just to threaten the job security of a long-time line cook with an attitude problem, and to keep him in line. He got the message and apologized to the manager, and I was fired for "breaking a yolk when flipping fried eggs" one time.
I'd been a line cook for a few years by then and thought I was doing pretty good. Well, guess not!
21. Up In The Air
I called a temp agency to get someone to help me count inventory. They sent a guy over with a cast on his arm...that was my first red flag. Still, I went with it because we were just counting parts and I thought hey, he can handle this. So we get started, and then I go out to lunch. I came back to a completely inexplicable sight.
This dude was in my office chair zoned out and drooling on himself with a can of air duster in his lap. I kicked him awake and escorted him out of my warehouse. Never used that temp agency again.
22. Reply All
This guy hadn't even started yet and just sent this bizarre introductory email out to the whole entire company, which ended with incredibly explicit details about himself. In it, he started off by claiming he liked anime and semi-embarrassing stuff like that, but ended up confessing to all his intimate bedroom preferences by the wrap-up.
To the whole company. He got fired before he even started. He supposedly apologized profusely, saying his friend played a prank on him, but the damage had already been done.
23. Smart Alec
This was a while ago at my old job. This new guy gets hired as a bus boy. He was super annoying and tried to insert himself into everyone's conversation whether they wanted him there or not. It only took a couple of hours for the whole restaurant to hate him. I was working the bar and he kept eating the bar fruit. I personally didn't care, but the manager did.
Manager comes over and tells him to stop eating the fruit. His response left me flabbergasted. He looks the manager in the eye and eats another piece of fruit. Manager says "Really?" followed by "Come with me to the office." New guy promptly replies with "Alright man, calm down” in a really testy, petulant voice. In front of me and like four other employees.
I wanted to slam my face into the ice bin, it was so cringey to witness. He promptly walked out the front door 10 minutes later without his uniform on. The worst thing about it was the manager was an insanely laid back guy. Heck, the whole restaurant was insanely laid back. You really had to try hard to get fired from this place.
Had he not been a total idiot about the reprimand, I'm almost positive he would have just gotten a slap on the wrist and kept the job.
24. Radio Silence
My co-worker quit his job—which was a great job, great pay, and great benefits—to work in a radio repair place. I mean, gotta do what you love and he was also a big radio enthusiast. Except, well, he got fired the first day on the job for taking parts for his own radios at home. Took him over a year to get back with us.
Frankly, I’m surprised they rehired him. He then got fired for being a security risk about a year or so later.
25. He’s Going Down
It was day one of training, and within the sixth hour of an eight-hour shift. I worked in an old crank handle service elevator at a private residential condominium. Basically, this place was for very, very, very wealthy people. We told this new guy to just shut up and stare straight ahead while he was on the elevator with the residents. Don't speak unless spoken to.
After all, old rich people are mean and don’t care about you. Well, what's the new guy do? Starts a conversation right away. But that wasn’t even the worst part. He actually asks the resident, "How much money do you make?”
26. Give Me Just One Reason
I was the sous chef at a small, quaint New England country inn. We had a dishwasher we were pretty sure was drinking at work named Jim. He'd show up with a quart bottle of orange juice that was a little too full and not quite the right color. He would also get pretty sloppy by the end of the night. The chef and I both knew he was drinking.
I told the chef we should just grab his bottle and check it. The chef said he checked with the owner and she told him we couldn't, though I’m not sure why. Even so, we were looking for a reason to get rid of him…and then that moment happened. One day, I slipped in the bake shop and completely wiped out in front of everyone.
I dropped a couple of cheesecakes I was carrying out of the oven and spilled the water bath all over myself. Burned the heck out of myself and I was angry, I'll admit as much. I carried the remains of my cheesecakes into the dish pit, just cursing a blue streak. The dishwasher said to me: "You kiss your momma with that mouth?"
I turned around and said, "I kissed yours." He then started challenging me to a fight and said he was going to kick my butt. Which I found pretty funny, so I yelled to the chef, "Hey chef, Jim says he's going to kick my butt.” Chef asked him if that was true, and Jim said "Yeah, I’m going to ruin him.” The chef simply said, "Great, you're fired."
He stormed off and left his "orange juice" behind.
27. It All Falls Down
A 19-year-old kid got hired to work the seafood counter at my store. I see him twice and then never again, so I asked a co-worker what happened. They revealed the whole, brilliant story. He had closed seafood one night and was walking out of the store when the five pounds of crab legs he'd stuffed down the back of his pants fell out in front of the closing manager.
28. Didn’t Think That One Through
I heard this from a manager I worked with when I worked in fast food. There was this one kid who didn’t show up for work. He ditched work often, so the manager called around, couldn’t get anyone to fill in his shift, and she eventually had to fill it for him. A few hours into his shift, the dude ditching SHOWS UP, with his friends, and orders food from that manager. She fired him on the spot.
29. Cold As Ice
I used to do a lot of field work on site investigation programs. Basically, we'd hang out on a drill rig while the drillers took rock cores. We'd log the cores, take photos, do some down-hole tests, etc. New engineer gets sent to the site and gets assigned the night shift. Some people love the night shift, but most people don't...hence sticking the junior with night shift.
After five nights, he calls the office and says he wants to go home because he's freezing and he hates it and he can't do it. It became plain pretty quickly that this job just wasn't for him. I got pulled onto that program, and I asked the drillers what the guy's deal was...and that’s when I discovered the real problem.
They other workers had a propane heater in the back of their van, and despite repeated invitations to sit in the back of the van, buddy just sat in his truck all night and shivered. In the middle of February.
30. Out With A Bang
I worked in a bar and a new girl started. At work, she seemed a little rough, but was fine. One day, she finished a shift, sat at the bar, and ordered a cabernet with lemonade and ice in it—not really relevant to the story, it just shows she is clearly insane. What really did her in was this: Her boyfriend came in, they had a huge fight in front of my manager and several customers, and she threw her drink over her boyfriend and dramatically stormed out.
31. Out Of Her League
I got hired as a long-term temp with one other person to do some basic data entry work at a major brand. It was also at their corporate headquarters, so pretty prestigious. Anyway, we went through all of this on-boarding stuff in the morning that required us to get photo IDs and figure out parking and all that kind of stuff.
Then after two or three hours, we were introduced to one of the employees in our new department, who began going over what we were going to be doing. None of it seemed overly difficult and I figured that while it was a new system I had never used before, I'd be able to work it out in a few days as long as I asked questions and took notes.
And that was the thing that made me realize that the other person who got hired with me probably lied on her resume and was completely out of her depth. She didn't take any notes and didn't ask any questions. And whenever I glanced at her, I could see flashes of panic on her face. In hindsight, it could have only gone one way.
So, lunchtime came, and when we came back, she said that another company had called her and offered her a permanent position and she couldn't work with us any longer. Both me and the person training us knew what was going on, but I'll give the other lady credit for finding a way out without losing face too badly. The takeaway here is: Yes, "Fake It Until You Make It" can and does work. But you gotta be able to fake it.
32. Family Feud
My sister was fired on day one. My dad had his own small medical practice and would hire me and my sisters as our "first job" to be his receptionist and file insurance claims, so we could get some workplace experience before we went job hunting in the larger world. My older sister worked for him in high school for a year.
I worked for him for two years, then it came time for my younger sister to take over. I brought her to work to start training and said the number one rule in the office was, "At work he's not dad, he's the doctor and the boss." She sassed him in front of a patient her first day, with all the venom and sarcasm a teenage girl can muster when dealing with a parent asking her to do something.
He fired her on the spot and I had to drag her out of there. Mom told her at least she'd get paid for the couple of hours she managed to be employed.
33. Not A Good Fit
My document-processing clerk was getting married and going on his honeymoon, so I got a short-term temp. It wasn't a temp-to-hire, everything was out in the open through a legitimate temp agency who generally did pretty good screening. Well, not this time. The temp's very first day, they show up with a box of things: Photos, mugs, office equipment, stuff to decorate a cubicle with.
I advised them not to unpack, since we were getting right into training. Within two hours after I let them go independently on a computer with a "Let me know if you need anything or have any questions," they said, "This mouse is hurting my wrist. It gave me carpal tunnel. I'm going to need worker's comp paperwork." Uh...what?
I made an immediate call to the agency ending this contract, then told the temp, "Your paperwork is at the temp agency office, go ahead and go see your rep there." They left their box of stuff behind; I had to have the temp agency come pick it up.
34. Out In The Open
The new guy drove a forklift into a fire hydrant, in front of a safety rep for the company. His supervisor was called over, and he immediately tells the supervisor a disturbing confession. He said quite plainly to us that he won’t pass a substance test, as he used his only bottle of clean urine earlier that day when he got hired.
Everybody standing there immediately burst into laughter, which continued as security (also laughing) escorted him off site. Even the supervisor was all smiles...just gave him a pat on the back and wished him the best of luck. It was wild.
35. Extra-Curricular Activities
We had a new guy who got hired and was here for MAYBE a week. He would take long bathroom breaks, but no one thought much of it originally. He sat right at the doorway to the departments area, and one day his boss went to the bathroom and when he came back, the guy just had, er, intimate videos playing on his iPad that was propped up on his desk.
The guy turned and looked at him, reached over and hit the lock button, and said, "Can we just pretend this didn't happen?" No, no we can't. Gone pretty much immediately.
36. With Friends Like These…
I met a dude through another dude, and he and his pregnant girlfriend had nowhere to go. I had an insane amount of acreage and I felt bad for the guy, so I let him stay in his RV on my land, and I even hooked him up to running water and electricity, all of which I paid for. He had a part-time job delivering furniture and never made enough to pay me the paltry 100 bucks he promised to pay me every month for helping them out.
When I'd confront him, he'd tell me he just never worked enough hours to provide for his girlfriend and pay me. So, proactively I got him a job at the hardware store I was assistant manager at until I finished my degree. This was 11 years ago. He came to work, and after two hours on his first day, just left. Like completely walked out.
He went back to the RV, which was parked next to my house, and never said anything and never returned. Told me it was a bad job that was beneath him. It seriously ruined my reputation at that store and luckily that wasn't my career path or anything.
37. A Happy Ending
We got a new contract for two receptionists to sit at our front desk. The company did not send their sharpest knives in the drawer because it was a low-dollar contract for only one year. You could consider the positions temporary. They sent a guy that my security manager called "Sticks." He was incredibly malnourished and thin.
We had a front door that was double door paned glass. I always exited through the side door and would look in through the glass doors every day when I left for home. On Sticks's second day, I looked in through the glass at the dark reception area and saw one of the office chairs behind the reception counter as it slowly spun.
I entered back in through the side door and came into the back of reception. I found Sticks laying on the floor with an ergonomic office chair that had fallen on top of him. His head was bleeding from where he struck the floor or some other object. Also, in my peripheral vision, I saw a can of compressed air, the type for cleaning keyboards.
Sticks said he was perfectly fine. I helped him up and sent him home. Over the next few days, other admin folks reported to me that they kept finding Sticks collapsed in the reception area when no one had been around. I finally called his corporate supervisor to come take him away. When the supervisor arrived, Sticks had locked himself in the supply closet and refused to talk to me.
I could hear him huffing air behind the door. The supervisor talked to him through the door and finally escorted him back to company headquarters. They fired him. I called the company, and I learned that Sticks was a former service member who had served in combat. Looking at his résumé, I knew he was also a former EOD team member. I connected the dots in a tragic way.
I suspected he had substance problems stemming from PTSD and head trauma. I still had his contact information, so I got in touch with him a week later. From then on, I coached him every day until I finally got him an appointment with a volunteer from AMVETS who got him and his family help and care. Today, I wish I knew where he was (this was more than 5 years ago).
I hope that he took advantage of the help offered to him. Because of this , I am going to text him right now and see how he is doing.
38. A Square Peg In A Round Hole
This incredibly strange office worker turned up each day with wet hair, wearing loose fitting pyjamas and shuffling around in her slippers. She lasted about a week before she was let go.
39. Loose Lips Sink Ships
This one woman was in and out within two weeks. She was a little abrasive, but seemed smart enough. Then she started complaining to the guy sitting next to her that the work was so boring. And talking up how she was just watching TV all day, and not even reading the stuff she was supposed to be working on, just writing whatever she felt like.
He told management, and she was gone a few days later.
40. Read The Room
Within minutes of being hired, shown to his desk, and given a company email address, this new dude emails the entiiiiiire company (500+ employees) that he has pre-screeners on DVD for movies that were not even in theaters yet. I think that at the time, one of the ones he offered was Spider Man 2. And one of the Resident Evil movies, I think.
Lots of titles, he said, $10 each. Anyway, he was fired, out the door, in under two minutes, it was pretty amazing. After all, we were a game software company, and someone looking to make fast money on pirated stuff was, well...incompatible with corporate culture, let's say.
41. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
I worked at an Arby's during college. This customer came in and ordered some food. They told the cashier they were new in town and asked, "Where's a good place to eat in town?" The correct answer was, according to the manager, "Arby's is the best place in town." The answer the cashier gave was not that...and she was fired shortly after for “promoting the competition.”
42. Mystery Man
This was at a pizza place I worked at in college. The new guy was started there on a Thursday. He seemed like a fine worker, and we showed him the ropes. He was also on subs, which is the easiest job, since the instructions are right in front of your face. Friday, he no call no shows, which is a major problem. It’s Friday, the busiest night of the week.
Besides that, he and I were the only kitchen workers that weren’t also drivers. But then the plot thickened. On Monday, an officer shows up at the restaurant, looking for him. No idea what happened as he wasn’t there. Tuesday, the owner informed me he was let go.
43. Losing The Popularity Contest
I worked in a restaurant for my first job in high school. I was about 16 when we hired on my co-worker’s little cousin. This kid was a year younger than me and a total jerk; no one liked him because of his attitude and behavior issues. Anyways, the kid gets hired and at first he's chill. Him and I both LOVED the same band, so we had a mutual bond and a common thing to talk about.
Other than that, though, I couldn't stand him much. During his first week, he starts to step on people’s toes quite easily because he notices some of us who are friends liked roasting each other, and he thought he could join in. However, the comments he was making weren’t silly banter, they were full-blown rude comments that made some of us mad.
We also started to notice that this kid didn't do his job properly, either. He worked the dish pit, and when working alone, his lack of proper cleaning of dishes, cutlery, and etc. threw everyone behind on their closing tasks because we'd have to ask him to re-wash literally everything due to food chunks being all over things.
After two to three weeks, a number of us complained to management. This kid’s older cousin even complained about him it got so bad. The last straw, I think, was him taking this dishwasher sprayer and starting to spray people as they walked into the kitchen. He got screamed at by a number of us and was fired a few days later when management noticed how angry all of us were with this kid.
44. A Cry For Help
I worked for a big home improvement store that I won't name, all I can say is the stores are orange. We had a guy come into work, very in his cups, and run one of the forklifts into the outdoor storage racks with customers around. Another employee forcibly removed him from the lift and dragged him to the back. But then something surprising happened.
Dude was given two options: Walk and potentially face charges, or go to an inpatient treatment center on the company's dime, and his job would be there if he wanted it after he got out. I can honestly say it's the one actually good thing I ever saw the company do at a corporate level.
45. Bad First Impression
They got fired before their first day on orientation. I got hired for a manufacturing job through a temp agency. Me and a friend of my wife’s were both supposed to start on Monday at the plant for a week-long orientation. She got into a fender bender on her way to orientation, and called them to say that she'd be a bit late, since she needed to give a statement.
The manager told her not to bother even coming in. Girl was torn up. She took pictures and the report in to the hiring manager, and tried to explain things to the company HR managers, but no dice. She was fired before ever clocking in.
46. Lighting Up The Joint
We had a new guy come in, go through all of the training on starting in our factory, lock out, tag out, and all of that stuff. He said he was an electrician. Then, the very first job he was asked to do, he was found working on a machine with the power locked on. There are so many things wrong with that in an industrial setting, it's unbelievable.
My boss pulled him out of the machine and said, "You're too stupid to work here." He then walked him out of the building. I think he was an actual employee there for three days at that point, and this was his first day actually on the production floor and not in training.
47. Slow And Steady Loses The Race
The IT crew at my large government office worked on a ticket system, meaning that the government workers submitted their problem online and one of the IT guys would pick it up on their end. The new guy just started his first day, logged into a computer at an empty office, and submitted a "reinstall entire OS" request so he could spend all day there.
The manager decided to check in on him before lunch to see how he was doing, and he was completely asleep. Fired before they even finished his hiring paperwork.
48. Not A Cat Person
One and a half hours into my shift as an animal care worker, I was showing my trainee how to clean the kitten rooms and started him on the easiest cage. We’re talking neonatal, six-day-old bottle feeder kittens. I explained how to set up the kennel, clean them up, etc. I turned around to grab some towels and a fresh hot water bottle when I heard a thump.
And then another thump. Turned around, and he was tossing the kittens to the other side of the kennel to move them. Like, underhand lobbing a softball, just tossed three kittens out of his way. I freaked out and yanked his butt down to the supervisor’s office. His excuse was the kittens were “attacking” him, and he felt threatened? So he threw them!!
No warnings, fired on the spot. The kittens all were fine and got adopted out a few months later.
49. Expensive Tastes
First week, a customer called over my co-worker to the unstaffed truffle counter. He hasn't been trained in truffles, so he just grabs one from the display case and sells it to the customer. This turned out to be a massive mistake. See, what he didn’t know was that the display "truffles" aren’t actually real truffles; they are made of plastic.
By the time he realized, the customer had already left and paid $90 for it. Fired.
50. Dishonest Mistake
She was hired because the manager thought she was hot. Turned out she was 15 and unable to actually work there.
51. Goodbye To You
I was promoted to VP of a struggling company. There were tons of employee issues, so I arranged for a random drug test. All employees, including the CEO. When we got the results back, we were shocked. We had to fire everybody in the company except for myself and the CEO, because we learned that we were the only clean people on the entire team. Goodbye team.
Sources: Reddit,
