Everyone has had a nightmare job or two in their time climbing the corporate ladder—but what if it turned out that you were the problem all along? These Redditors confess the stomach-dropping moments they got fired.
1. Stay Mad
My manager kept losing my class schedule. I worked at a subway and had class two days a week. Several times, he put me on those days anyway. I gave him multiple copies of the schedule every time. It didn’t matter: The owner took me off the schedule for "calling out too much".
When I showed the owner proof, his response made my blood boil. He said it was too late and that they already hired someone else. This was 12 years ago. I’m still mad about it.
2. Over Before It Started
A business I went to long ago was hiring and I got the job. Right after I signed all the paperwork, the department manager came in and asked who I was. I told him I just got hired as a temp. The manager then said he never authorized any hiring and fired both me and my boss on the spot.
I did not work for this company for a single hour before they fired me.
3. I’m Worth Two Of You
I was denied a raise by HR after consistently working 60- to 70-hour work weeks. After that, my Vice President, who had supported and requested the raise for me, told me to stop putting in the extra time, work my 40, and spend that extra time applying to new jobs.
Within a month, a meeting was called to "mutually part ways" because my work wasn't getting done. I was gratified to learn that they had to hire two people to do my job after I left.
4. Phoning It In
I was temping at a phone center (which I hated) and the management tried to schedule both of our 15-minute breaks in the morning, before lunch. I asked if we could change it, but they said no. Of course, that’s nowhere near lawful, but I checked the legislation to make sure.
I went back to the scheduler and told them so, and that I had checked my facts. I was escorted off the property by security. Good riddance to them.
5. Got Ya There
I got fired for doing my job too quickly and sitting down the rest of the time. I was a gas station cashier.
Me: “Why should I stand when I’m the only person in the store?”
Manager: “It’s more professional to stand than sit”.
Me: “Then why do you sit in your office?”
6. Thanks A Lot, Mom
This isn't why I got fired, but this is why I didn't get a job...I was 16 and looking to work at a Dairy Queen as my first job. My mom drove me to the interview, and I was super nervous.
She looked me in the eye and said, "Just be honest, and be yourself, and you'll do fine”. I took this advice in the worst way.
I walked into that interview and when he asked me "How long do you think you'll work here?" I responded, "Until something better comes along".
7. It’s Like I Wasn’t Even There
I talked my way into a job at a software company when they put a hiring notice in a local paper. I had no idea what the software did. I still don't. They hired me as a trainer, and no one ever explained what the product was.
I did a few weeks where I was trained on the software but literally none of it ever made sense to me. It was like they were speaking gibberish. One day I showed up, and a lady I had never seen before gave me a check and walked me out to the parking lot.
No one even ever said "You're fired" or anything. It's one of the strangest things that ever happened to me.
8. No Compassion At All?
I went to the emergency room instead of work. I came back with an ER note and they said, “We won’t be needing that. Can you come with us?” I was 18 and it was my first full-time job.
9. You Got Me In This Mess
My Parole Officer wanted to make sure I actually had a job, so he went to my employer listed on my file to surprise visit me on the job. I did home wiring, so I worked at different job sites and was rarely in the office. So, I wasn’t there.
He called me to say he was going to charge me for lying to him about my whereabouts. This could've landed me back behind bars for my remaining sentence. The owner of the company had to speak with him and vouch for me.
My Parole Office didn't charge me, but the owner sure did fire me that day. Finding a job with my history isn’t an easy thing, and it wasn't long before my PO threatened to charge me AGAIN if I didn't find a job soon.
10. A Word To The Wise
I was teaching ESL and Italian in a school I'm not sure was totally above board; I got paid per hour in cash. My wage depended on how many children arrived at class that day. If it was fewer than five, I got paid less.
One day, I only had two children and I taught my class. The following day, I got a text from my boss at 4 a.m. saying I had to be in two hours earlier. When I arrived, he had the missing children there and I had to give them the class they missed.
Fast forward to closing time, and I went for my money. "So, eight hours, $15 the hour, that makes $120”. "No, six hours. I told you that you had to make up those hours”.
"And I did, which is why it's eight hours”. "It was your responsibility, it's six hours”. "Sir, I charge by the hour”.
The guy gave me a cold glare and gave me my eight-hour cash. He told me to not come back.The joke's on him: I was his only teacher, and he doesn't know any Italian (also his English sucks). He might've thought I was going to beg. Now he has a teacherless language school.
11. Time Isn’t Your Money
I refused to come in 15-20 minutes early, unpaid, for my shift. I was always 5-10 minutes early, but they decided they wanted me there earlier.
I carried on as normal as I was not coming in if I was not being paid. I turned up for a noon shift at 11:49, and no one would look at me when I arrived.
I was then thrown into a meeting and fired for being “late”. I was out the door before it even hit 12. It was the only time I’d ever been fired.
12. They Didn’t Understand His Art
Ok, I admit I was young and dumb. I built a snow scorpion sculpture—I used ketchup for the red glowing eyes and everything—on a particularly miserable day at a ski resort. The guests enjoyed my sculpture very much, management wasn’t so happy.
13. My Lips Are Sealed
My boss’s wife thought he was having an affair with the office manager. He asked me if I thought it was possible that he was having an affair with the office manager.
I said, “It’s possible, but I don’t think you are. I could see why your wife might think so too”.
I was 21 and naïve as heck. I never should have said anything.
14. A Silver Lining
This was the last job I was fired from, a little over 12 years ago. One of our biggest clients, K-Mart, had declared bankruptcy and was closing many stores. The corporate office of the company I worked for, a supplier for K-Mart and other chain stores, sent word to all warehouses and offices that all part-time people were to be laid off.
My supervisor told me, and I said I saw it coming. But there was a consolation. She told me there were some DVDs and CDs in the back, and to help myself to whatever I wanted. I took a couple of CDs, a Planet of the Apes (remake) DVD, and a Simpsons VHS tape.
15. Worth It?
I was 19 and working as a janitor at a large self-storage facility. Most days were filled with sweeping and mopping endless hallways of flickering fluorescent light.
When someone went delinquent on their bill (after a 3-month grace period), I would be instructed to empty their unit and dump everything in the trash outside.
Once or twice, it was a person who passed, but otherwise, it was pretty common to see a room full of absolute junk that someone got tired of paying for. Banged-up furniture, garbage bags of ratty clothing, stacks of old magazines. It was usually pretty hoarder-friendly stuff.
Not that I'd want any of it, but the policy was I had to throw it into the dumpster outside no matter what it was. One day I got notified to empty a unit, so I grabbed the bin, cut the lock, and fling open the gate. The room is full of huge cardboard boxes stacked to the ceiling.
I open one up out of curiosity, and it's full of brand-new, unopened Gundam models. The entire room is full of them, dozens of boxes with dozens of models in each, and I'm talking the $50-$100 ones I saw for sale at my local comics shop every week.
The manager would check up on me once or twice a day, and that morning he walked up, and I showed him all of the brand-new merchandise and said there has to be a better system than trashing all of this.
He said rules are rules, something about insurance I didn't understand, and told me to throw them all away.
I went and I backed up one of the complementary U-Haul style box trucks, picked a few models out for myself, and loaded it up in the truck with the rest of it. On my lunch break,k I drove over to the Children's Resource Center that I'd volunteered at during high school.
It's a place where any child (but usually poorer ones) would go after school for arts and crafts and activities to keep them busy until their parents got home. The people at the drop-off dock were so grateful before I even left, they were handing them out to some extremely excited kids.
I drove back to the self-storage place with enough time to eat a sandwich before clocking back in. But that's not why I got fired.
I got fired because the manager came to check on me that afternoon, and after a while of looking around, found me sitting cross-legged on the floor of the janitor closet with model parts spread all around me, happily assembling a sweet translucent Zaku model.
I was so entranced I didn't even hear him come in. I just hear this long,drawn-out, exasperated sigh. I looked up and he just says "keys" and that was that. I spent the rest of the week assembling Zakus and Valkyries and lying to my parents about getting replaced with a Roomba.
16. Putting My Foot Down
After 3 years of working, I decided I wanted 2 days off and the owner gave me the go-ahead. This was a couple of weeks after both my grandmother and great-grandmother passed within about a week of each other, so I wanted to get a little vacation with my nuclear family.
The day before my 2 days off, the manager (not the owner) told me I couldn't take the 2 days of,f and if I didn't show up, I'd surely be fired. I gave her a quick “screw you,” finished my day, and never went back. No regrets.
17. Punctuality Isn’t Everything
I got fired for submitting my timesheets on Monday at 8 am when I got to work. By policy, they were to be in by noon on Saturday, but my Fridays ended in the field, so I just did them on Monday mornings.
My bosses didn't even look at them until noon on Tuesday, so it had 0 impact on them. I drove home from being fired feeling relieved because of how unhappy I was at that job.
Vitalii Vodolazskyi, Shutterstock
18. You Are What You Don’t Eat
I gave my employee meal to my mother. That's literally it. I didn't like eating the food there, so I had my mom bring me lunch and I just gave my employee meal to her. Apparently, that was considered theft, so I was fired.
ANTONI SHKRABA production ,Pexels
19. Not Taking One For The Team
I worked in a DIY store. 10 minutes before my shift ended, I moved a pallet cage of paint cans (slowly) to the warehouse. When I got in there, one of the sides came off along with half of the paint cans. They spilled all over.
This is where I made a fatal error. Since there were only about 2 minutes of my shift left, I moved the pallet over the paint, covering it a bit, and went home.
Unfortunately, it was all caught on CCTV.
20. What An Animal
I was in my late 20s and had just gotten out of the Army and wanted to finish school. I worked for a pet store as a groomer part-time while I was working on finishing up the semester.
I put in time off for my finals week about 3 months back and it was approved by both my immediate boss and the assistant manager.
Everyone in the entire store knew I was going to be focusing on school for that week. My jerk boss called me in the middle of one of my finals and left me a voicemail saying I needed to come in because they were 1 person short.
I didn't even know until 45 minutes later when I walked out of class. He had called me 4 times and on the 4th voicemail he left me a threatening message.
So, I called him back and we argued about my "professionalism”. I went into the store to have a conversation with him, which led to him threatening to fight me.
I told him if he wanted to fight then he could take off his name tag and meet me in the parking lot off company property. Suddenly he became really docile and just told me I was fired.
I sent in the voicemails to corporate and found out a few weeks later he was "transferred" to a different store.
21. Bad Timing
I was fired for getting lunch. I was 18, working at a mall kiosk with a "manager" title even though I managed nothing for something like $8/hour. Hours painted on the door, zero support or other employees to relieve for a break.
The owner showed up while I had locked up to go get a bite to eat. Fired on the spot.
22. Lesson Learned
This one is…bad. I was fired for taking medications for personal use. I was a nurse. 6 years clean now but lost my nursing license. It was a difficult lesson to learn, but it may have saved my life.
23. Short-Cutters Never Prosper
I was fired because my job "was eliminated". This was code for "getting rid of you and hiring someone to replace you at half the salary”. Karma hit them hard.
Their scheme was less than a stellar success because the person they hired was an idiot and could not do the job.
The customers got severely angry, and they gave me a $15K severance if I promised not to sue them. I took their money and still sued them for age discrimination. I won.
24. No Wiggle Room
I was sick with bronchitis on a Sunday and informed them Sunday. I called Monday with a doctor’s note with orders stating I was to return no earlier than the following Monday. My manager told me, "OK, feel better”.
Friday came around, and I received an email stating I was terminated effective immediately due to absences. This was my first absence. I asked if I could resign instead because I loved what I did and who I worked with, but no.
25. Things Aren’t As They Seem
I'm an electrician and I was given my final warning for having an untidy van. It wasn't great but I was told to tidy it over the weekend, which I did. I then still got my final warning and dismissal the following week.
What rubbed me up was that my boss was the biggest culprit for having an untidy van and I had likely learned this trait as an apprentice from him.
Honestly though, looking back I was probably sacked for other reasons and have since been aware that rarely are you fired for the reason that your boss wants you fired for.
When they want you out, they'll find a reason so best to self-reflect on your other failings rather than be angry for being fired over something trivial.
26. Under New Management
I was a brand-new engineer out of college. Like, green. I got a job offer at an aircraft factory as a Quality Engineer. I had been an intern for 3 years there and they helped put me through school.
I worked in a group designing new floor layouts and how these business jets flowed through the process.
I had always received good performance reviews, and that is why my internship turned into a scholarship and a job offer. When I started full-time, I was assigned to a facility across town that did sheet metal stuff.
I remember walking into the office on my first day, and introducing myself to my new manager.
She immediately turned away, refused to shake my hand, and ignored me. The next 6 months were the same. She legit would not speak to me, would not give me projects, would not schedule one-on-ones to give any direction, and if I was on an email chain and she was looped in, she would take me off.
I would walk over to her, and she would hunch her back and try to cover whatever she was working on so I couldn't see as if it was some big secret. Finally, I got involved in some continuous improvement projects and I started (in my opinion) finding a groove.
Finally, she pulled me into a conference room, and yelled at me for 2 hours (yes 2 HOURS) about how I was not doing the things she wanted me to do. That wasn’t all.
She gave me a self-help book and told me I needed to read it and tell her what was wrong with myself. She then terminated me without HR or anybody else knowing.
To this day, I don’t know what her problem was or why she hated me from the moment I introduced myself. I have a wonderful and successful career and currently manage quality for 4 factories in a Swedish conglomerate.
If I ever see her again, I will tell her how I have modeled my management style after promising myself I would never be like her.
My employees always know what is expected of them, how they know if they are succeeding, and where they can go for help if they are not.
27. High Maintenance
I was in a really, really bad place when I took a job, I knew I had almost no qualifications for. It was as a maintenance repair guy at an apartment complex.
I have no idea how to fix anything. It lasted a few months before they caught on. I tried my best to learn and watch YouTube videos, but I was taking way to long to do stuff.
28. Runaway Employee
I have a friend who used to work at a large retail store. Her manager would notify her when it was time for her 15-minute breaks and her lunch break every day.
Except she kept being interrupted from breaks by that same manager or co-workers who were told to find her by the manager. Because of this, she started taking breaks in her car.
The manager got mad about it, and escalated things to the point where she was fired for leaving the property during her 15-minute breaks. I guess you aren’t allowed to do that.
But either way, she hadn't ever actually left, she just read in her car for a while to get away from work.
She didn't have money for a lawyer, but I always felt that would have been a pretty easy wrongful termination case to prove if she had.
29. An Underlying Issue
I was fired from Panera as soon as I walked in the door for my first day of work. I showed up 10 minutes early and walked in 5 minutes before my shift started.
The manager met me at the door and said I was being "unprofessional" and threatened to call the authorities when I pushed for an explanation.
Turns out the employees did lots of substances while working and were probably off their heads.
30. Not Worth The Time
Was working at a start-up, running myself into the ground to fulfill all my performance metrics (which I did). I told my boss that I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my work/life balance forever. His reply told me all I needed to know. He said I wasn’t dedicated enough and fired me on the spot.
His exact words were “We need people who are 200% dedicated, not just 100%”.
31. A Take-Home Blunder
This was 30 years ago. I was furious with my boss for asking me to work a private event for a group of his friends. The theme meant that most people were drinking Corona. I worked a six-hour shift at an open bar, and he tipped me $20 at the end of the night.
I slipped 4 Coronas into my backpack before I left for the night. The assistant manager heard the clinking of the bottles,and asked me about it, and when I told him I was taking some Coronas home for myself he fired me.
Justified for sure. The only grudge I hold is against the big boss who screwed me on the tip.
32. Wrongfully Accused
22 years ago. I technically got fired for harassment. The truth is much different. The reality was the big boss liked me and wanted to train and promote me.
The boss below him didn't like me. When he was away for a couple of weeks, I got called into the office and told I was fired for harassment with a certain member of staff—a man much older than me, a 16-year-old girl.
My direct boss was shocked, and I was shocked. This other person worked in our department, I'd been around them for a couple of hours on my first day as they showed me the computer, but we’d not really spoken since other than a hello on the way in.
My direct boss apologized to me after the meeting, and said she had no idea it was coming and had no idea what they were on about. There was only me and her in the office. The other two members of staff, including this guy, had their own office.
We didn't need to go into each other's. It eventually came out he had been told to go along with it. The big boss was furious when he got back, but things had been done already. That person didn't progress any further in the company.
Again, I was a 16-year-old girl at the time and the guy they strong-armed into it was a 28ish-year-old man. It was awkward on so many levels. No big loss though, not for me. The person who arranged it all came off much worse.
33. Office Space
I work full-time as a web designer, and my first full-time job was doing social media content for a start-up company in my hometown. On a Friday about 8 months into my job, my boss emailed us all to say that we'll be starting in "the new office" on Monday.
I was never told that we were moving, but it seemed like everyone else was. I also didn't have a full driver's license yet, and the town the new office was in was an hour's commute away, so I would have to take public transit every day.
Luckily, I got some advice from my parents, and I told my boss that I couldn't feasibly commute to the office, but I still wanted to work for the company. So, my boss terminated my position, and I got put on unemployment (which wouldn’t have happened if I’d quit).
34. Nickle And Diming
I worked at a car dealership in college between semesters. I sold a Ford Raptor for like 80k, and the commission was like $200. After that, I would go to my desk and just study for school. I didn’t try to sell anything after that, where was the incentive?
I knew I would be fired, but it took them 2 months to realize I had done absolutely nothing since the last time I sold the Raptor. $200 for selling an 80k truck, no thanks.
35. Out Of The Frying Pan And Into The Firewall
I was working in Tech Support for a software company. We'd made a big sale to a major university, and I had been designated as the lead contact point for them. The first question they asked was "How do we enable the firewall on your product?”
There was a big problem. We don't have a firewall on our product.
I talked about it a bit but eventually, they asked point-blank, where is the firewall. "There isn't”. Within an hour I was in a conference room with the sales rep the head of sales and my boss, the head of Tech Support.
Lots of screaming went on from Sales and then lots of meetings with bosses for the rest of the day.
Throughout all of this, none of them could deny the basic fact of what I stated, our product didn't have a firewall, nor were there any plans to add one in future versions. The next morning, I came in and was greeted at the door by my boss, led to a conference room, and informed that I was being let go for "performance reasons”.
Later that day the Sales Rep messaged me on LinkedIn telling me to enjoy waking up tomorrow morning and being a jobless bum.
36. I Don’t Believe In You
I was hired by someone who knew I had no previous experience but thought I had a great capacity to learn and liked my character.
He and another senior manager took their time to teach me my role and answer any questions I had and told me to always come find them if I felt unsure about something.
Then they both left the company rather abruptly, and my new boss was the total opposite of them. He let me know right off the bat that had it been up to him, he would have hired someone with more experience. Despite that, he doubled my workload.
When I tried coming to him with problems, he told me it wasn’t his responsibility to answer questions and to ask my co-worker instead.
My co-worker tried to help but had his massive workload to deal with. I lost my sense of direction and my work suffered for it. He fired me about a month after he took over.
37. No Regrets
At 7:30 the night before I was to leave for vacation, my boss texted me saying I had to be at work tomorrow or else. Mind you, I put in for this time off 4 weeks ago.
I said he was insane. I didn’t go to work the next day and I was fired for insubordination. Worth it. Would do it again.
mikoto.raw Photographer , Pexels
38. A Little Too Efficient
The only time I got fired, I was 13-14, working at a go-kart track. I had been there about a month when I was left alone for a solid week to take care of the track, as the other 2 track attendants sat around drinking and chatting with the boss.
I ran it flawlessly and had no issues. On my first day off after working like 12 days straight I got called in. I showed up within 5 minutes and they fired me, saying that all I did was sit around and make the other guys run the track.
They literally accused me of doing what the other guys were doing. I slammed that place so hard to everyone I knew, and they went out of business within the next 2 years.
39. Stand By Me
My co-worker was refused promotions, title changes, and pay raises for years in a 3-person department he pretty much ran. He was dealing with some serious depression for a few years and unfortunately, he lost that fight.
A week after he passed, I had a meeting with my manager, department director, and C-level. I raged at what I found. They were recruiting two people to replace him. The job titles were the same ones he had been asking about for years.
I saw red and verbally ripped into them for about 20 minutes about how they always told him it wasn’t possible and now that he’s gone it’s suddenly possible? I was fired 2 days after the meeting and don’t regret a thing, those people are evil.
40. Hackers Gonna Hack
In college,e I had a temp job doing quality assurance. I figured out their internal site had profile pages that freely allowed the execution of JavaScript in the form fields. I thought it would be funny to make my profile look crazy, so I changed the colors and added some animation.
This way when you go to the list of employee profiles, you might get a chuckle and it would bring attention to the fact that it allowed executing code. This was something I already brought to their attention previously. Anyway, I got fired for "breach of security".
41. Timing Is Everything
Got fired on day 89 of a 90-day temp contract. The contract stated if you were still employed as a temp on day 90, they had to hire you full time. They had a point system for discipline. If you were late, it was half a point. Accumulate 3 points and it is instant termination.
At my firing meeting, they said I had accumulated 30 points. I explained, for what seemed like the millionth time, that the punch clock for temps is 15 minutes faster than the clock for hired-in employees, and that all their temps are getting paid an extra 15 minutes every single day because they clock in and go sit in the cafeteria.
I literally would walk in every day with my boss at the same time...and he was the one who fired me for accumulating 60 workdays’ worth of tardy points.
But there was one thing left. I asked why I just wasn't fired at 3 points. Why was I allowed to accumulate 30? They said they liked the production numbers I was putting up.
They even encouraged me to reapply as a temp and they could have me back on the floor as early as the next day.
42. You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone
I got fired because I de-escalated the manager, when she was yelling at a 16-year-old girl, in front of customers. The manager didn't much like that I was stopping her from being a jerk, so she fired me. This was years ago.
The biggest twist is she had recruited a few of the staff to back her up in pretending I was bad at my job. She possibly even created fake write-ups. In any case, she refused to show them to me when I demanded to see them, and I definitely didn't sign anything resembling a write-up.
Two days after I was fired, several of the staff (including some who had been on the manager's side) came to my house to ask me for help. Turns out, once I was gone, there was no one to hold the manager accountable, and she'd turned on everyone.
Screaming and writing people up when they couldn't be in literally 2 parts of the store at the same time, refusing to do unsafe tasks, etc. I told them that they helped her get rid of me, now they could deal with her.
43. A Scheduling Nightmare
I took the vacation my manager approved my time off to take. I was workingpart-timee and wanted to go to an event with some friends, some of whom also worked with the same company, one at my location and one at another location across town.
Knowing it might not be possible to get the time off when others had already requested it, I asked before booking or paying for anything. My manager said they would look into it and get back to me.
I followed up a couple of times and kept getting put off until I finally said I needed an answer.
If it wasn’t possible, that would be fine, but tickets would no longer be available soon, so any longer waiting for an answer and it wouldn't matter if my time was approved.
So, my manager and I stood at the computer and reviewed the schedule for that week. They confirmed they could make it work if I took the week off.
I pay for my tickets, accommodations, etc. The week before it's time to go, the new schedule goes up and I'm on it. I reminded my manager we agreed that I could take the week off and they told me it no longer worked out, so I needed to come to work.
I said I had already spent more than I'd make that week on my plans, and I was going. My manager called me shortly after the start of my first scheduled shift that week and asked if I was coming in.
I told them I was 16 hours away from the event I planned to be at. I was fired that instant. It was somewhat satisfying to hear that he was later demoted.
44. Easy To Miss
I got fired from a Target distribution center recently. I worked there because I was laid off from my other job at the time. A couple of months into it, my old job called me and said I could come back. I had the best moment of victory.
I walked out mid-shift because I hated working in the warehouse. They just sent me an email last month saying I was a no-call, no show. I haven’t worked there in 3 years.
45. You’re Outta Here
My boomer manager kept insulting me, blaming me for things my co-worker did, and kept getting an attitude with me any time I didn't bend over backward to accommodate her ego. So, one day she asked me why my co-worker did a certain thing. I told her I had no idea.
She pressed me. I sai,d "How am I supposed to know? Explain it to me. Tell me how I am supposed to know what he did”. She said, "I don't know". I walked away to keep doing my job. The next thing I heard was "You know what? Just go! Get OUT”.
I got un-fired by her boss a few hours later and transferred to a better location but being able to cold shoulder her after months of asking her nicely not to belittle me was quite satisfying.
46. Down And Out
It was my first real job out of college. I landed the $52,000/year job about four months after graduation. It was an office job working in the energy industry. I was very excited. My friends were envious. I had no idea what I was getting into. I came to hate the work quickly.
It was mostly unsupervised project management paperwork. I just stopped doing it after a few months. Another co-worker had started there about the same time as me and I just had him do all the work.
The thing that gets me is I knew my firing was coming, but I made no effort to change. I would just watch StarCraft 2 games on YouTube all day.
When my boss (a man whom I respected and liked) sat me down with my manager to let me go, he said something like, "This just isn't working out”. I said: "I know. I'm sorry I didn't do the work you asked of me. I think this is the right thing to do”.
I was so disappointed in myself. It was real. I was employed there for about one and a half years. I was unemployed for about four months.
When I was fired, I had about $5,000 in my bank account. I got my student loans put on forbearance, cut all my costs as best I could, and I applied for unemployment insurance benefits.
By the time I started my new job, I had about $4,500 left. I don't understand how, especially since I was fired from my previous job, but I got another energy-related job that paid $65,000/year. This work was much more engaging.
I was more stringent with myself in the new job. I didn't aimlessly browse the Internet at work. I tried hard and my manager saw it. I liked the work, but it certainly was not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
After nearly two years, I left work to return to school to become a physician assistant.
Upon giving my notice, my manager even offered me a raise to stay. If it had not been for my girlfriend (now wife) I would probably still be a lazy worker. Now I look at my college friends who got lower-paying jobs (~$35,000/year) out of school and they are doing great.
They worked much harder than me and made better contacts. I wish I had their work ethics when I got my first job. I'd say I recovered well, and I'm excited about my new career. However, I am still ashamed of my behavior at my first job. This is a story I will tell my children.
47. The Truth Always Comes Out
I asked the nurse assistant I was working with to stay with a confused patient while I went and put a new IV in another patient. The assistant left the patient alone.
She fell out of bed and got a big bloody skin tear on her arm. After I took care of that, I went and found the assistant and told her the patient was injured because of her insubordination.
She cussed at me and left the unit. I did not see her again that shift. She and another assistant decided on their own to trade assignments. I wrote the woman up. Then she got her revenge. She went to management and lied about me.
She said I called her names and yelled at her. I did neither. Management fired me rather than deal with a false claim. I collected unemployment, but karma came for her in the end. She did something similar with another nurse a couple of weeks later and was fired.
My manager asked if I could be rehired. HR said no. When my manager quit to start her nursing agency a year later, she hired me.
48. Outfoxed By A Foxy Lady
I was a kid and just started at a local pizza place. I was let go a couple weeks later because a pizza chef from Chicago had moved into the area and needed a job. It was a business decision that I totally understood.
But then I found out the real story. A week later, I went to go get my last check and asked how he was doing.
The girl up front was like "Pizza chef from Chicago? The only new hire was the manager’s new girlfriend”.
49. Fight Cancer, Not Me
I missed a lot of work because my wife got brain cancer. They called me in for a meeting and said. "Sorry, we are downsizing and letting a lot of people go". But I knew the awful truth. They didn't fire anyone else, including a co-worker who was caught fabricating reports.
50. Going Above And Beyond To Be A Jerk
The only time I've gotten fired was working for a trade company, during the first week. I was a supervisor, and there was a second supervisor on site. I got a call that my wife had been rushed to the hospital, which was literally less than a mile away.
I asked the other supervisor if I could go to attend to her, and he said "Sure, no problem, I've got things here. Go”. I returned to the job site later and I made an infuriating discovery. I find the boss there, and he let me go on the spot for leaving the team "without a supervisor".
He knew what had happened, and still fired me. I won't lie, that one made me angry.
