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“How Dumb Can You Be?”: 29 Times People Got Fired And Had No One But Their Stupid Selves To Blame
Article created by: Indrė Lukošiūtė
Depending on where you live, it can be pretty hard or very, very easy to fire you. If you are a Hong Kong banker, you might get months of severance pay after being fired. But some folks do things so deeply idiotic that not a single soul is surprised when they are let go more or less on the spot.
Someone asked “What's the dumbest way someone you worked with got fired?” and people shared their best stories. So get comfortable as you read through these folk’s misadventures, upvote the best (or worst) ones and be sure to add your own thoughts and experiences to the comments section down below.
- Read More: “How Dumb Can You Be?”: 45 Times People Got Fired And Had No One But Their Stupid Selves To Blame
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#1
Two co-workers were out one night and one of them hurt his hand and had to go hospital. He still came into work on time the next morning. The other one phoned in saying he was still stuck at the hospital with the friend so couldn't make it in. 🙄😂.
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#2
Dude got fired for forgetting to mute himself during a zoom call where he spent 10 minutes explaining to his cat why our boss "has the leadership skills of wet cardboard".
#3
I worked at a university. A guy got hired with the maintenance crew. Later that day, a woman's bike was stolen from the bike rack outside the maintenance office. The next day, it reappeared on the bike rack with a new lock. She called campus police and as they were taking a report at the bike rack, the new maintenance guy came out to go home on his "new" bike he stole from her. He was fired.
#4
Day one in orientation with about 20 other people. Cute gal in a professional skirt and blouse steps up on the stage and starts to introduce herself.
A guy from one table over whistled, basically cat calling the woman. The presentation stopped immediately, and the dude was escorted out.
We all got a lesson on unwanted sexual advances instead.
#5
She showed up to her 2nd shift, stumbling and stinking of liquor, while making jokes about the fact there was a bar across the street.
She was a delivery driver.
Yeah, bye.
#6
Uncle of ex husband (who worked at the same place) told his boss his wife died. The boss came to the house with flowers and said sorry for your loss. Wife heard him, walked in and said who died. Doofus wanted a day off and got a permanent one.
#7
Former airline worker here. Head flight attendant thought it would be funny to enter the cockpit wearing a plastic bag over their head, pretending they had been hijacked. Needless to say, they were stood down swiftly.
#8
Dude was a police officer for over a decade and got fired for running multiple women’s license plates through the system to get their #s and hit on them. They complained and utilizing the system for a non-LE purpose is a crime in itself. You can see where this becomes a huge problem for the agency.
Bro had wife and kids at home too.
#9
I used to work as a bartender for a big, well known hotel chain. One day, another bartender decides to steal a case of beer. To accomplish this, he took it to the loading dock (which, as you'd expect, had security cameras on it), placed it right in the middle of the well-lit loading area and covered it with a cloth.
By the time he came back with his car, a security guard was there waiting for him, and said "if you're going to insult our intelligence this much, you deserve to be fired."
#10
Tried covertly switching a customer's bank deposit into their own account. Yeah, not too bright that one. Bank found out like, the next day. Ironic part? She was in operations and was one of our auditors.
#11
Hired a guy to be a welder. Kept asking where the spools of copper were kept. By lunch he'd stolen a forklift and tried ramming the storage bay the copper was kept in. Only manager key cards could open them.
#12
Called in sick to work, then posted photos on Facebook of her partying while she was supposedly out sick.
Many of her coworkers were Facebook friends with her, including some of the managers.
#13
Working at a call centre. We were in training. He took a call and thought the customer sounded hot so he took her number from her profile and started texting her. Naturally she found this highly creepy and reported him to our operations manager. He was fired that day and had to explain why to his wife.
#14
Brand new cake decorator at my HEB turned in a cake with the words "I JUST REMEMBERED I HATE DECORATING CAKES".
#15
Stole cash from the register that had a camera pointed at it. She could see the view of the camera on a monitor right by the register, so she knew she was in frame.
#16
I work for an airline and we fly for free, new-ish hire decides he'd rather be on the beach so he calls in sick and he shows up to the airport and hops on a plane, one of the sups sees him and lets him fly and they halted his flight benefits after the plane left. Don't know exactly what happened after that but I never saw him again.
#17
When I worked as the Cash Loss Control Officer for a bank, I was called to a branch to investigate a large cash difference. A new teller, who was only three weeks on the job, had a significant discrepancy at the end of her shift. Her supervisor had helped her with the reconciliation, and the branch reported that all checks had been made.
The next day, I went to the branch and asked to see the teller's reconciliation and microfilm copies. Within 30 minutes, I found two deposit slips for over $10,000 that were not properly processed. Both deposits were for the same customer. When I questioned the teller and her supervisor, the teller couldn't remember the transactions, but the supervisor became very nervous.
I contacted the customer, who told me the supervisor had personally made the deposits to repay a personal debt he owed. I confronted the supervisor, who confessed to the theft. He was immediately fired and arrested at the branch.
#18
Had a guy get fired for bringing a drone to work and flying it on his lunch break, at a secure facility.
I mean how dumb can you be?
#19
While serving in the army, a young private decided to take a Land Rover home for a long weekend. Realised he might get caught, so took it to a car park, smashed the ignition and set it on fire (all caught on CCTV)
However it took about a week for the unit to get informed by the police that they had found our burned out landy, no one had noticed it was missing and if he'd drove it back and left it where he found it, no one would've noticed it had gone anywhere.
Result - discharged and 6 months in civvy nick.
#20
Not really dumb so much as memorable. Working at Sonic in the 90s. Training this new guy who seemed perfectly normal for a 18-20 year old dude. Weekend stoner, got along with the carhops without bein a creeper. Learned the grill and prep station pretty good in only a couple days.
His third or fourth day hes prepping onion rings and the owner of the local franchise had come in to do paperwork. Owner walks by the prep table and new guy turns and power slaps him across the face with a hand covered in batter and bread crumbs. Owner jumps back. Dude pulls one of his own legs up by the ankle with one hand, hops up and down on the other while playing air guitar with the batter hand screaming "I'm rockstar ghandi!" At the top of his lungs.
He guitar hopped all the way out the door screaming the whole time and then took off running and we never saw him again. He didn't even come back for his paycheck.
#21
Our job was showing occupied apartments (people still lived there) for the landlord to re-rent. You had to be friendly and helpful, supervise, make sure people didn’t touch the tenant’s stuff, answer questions, lock up after.
This dude finished an apartment showing, stayed in the apartment, and started eating the tenant’s cereal out of the box with his bare hands! The tenant had cameras and sent us the video while he was still in there chowing down….
#22
They got caught writing in tips - adding an extra one or whatnot. They got arrested at the restaurant.
#23
Intern took a nap at work, but he chose to take that nap on one of the nice couches in the executive suite.
#24
A guy I worked with got fired because he would use company stationery to write fake recommendation letters for his friends who were looking for a job. He gave himself a fake job title (we worked in word processing). I think he said he was Office Manager. He got caught when a prospective employer called asking for the Office Manager of the company instead of the name of guy writing the fake letter. When the real Office Manager got the call, his deception was revealed and he was out of there.
#25
Guy got caught stealing office snacks on camera after HR literally sent an email saying “we have cameras, don’t steal the snacks.”
Coworker called in sick then posted Instagram stories from a pool party the same afternoon.
#26
As a manager at GNC. I hired a girl who was a solid fit with the team. After 2-3 days, she no called / no showed. I found out later it was cuz her boyfriend “didn’t like her working with guys”…
Good luck!
#27
#1: We got a call from a truck/lorry-driver and said that he saw one of our company cars swerving across the road. Turns out he was drunk out of his skull at 9am. He started working 2 weeks prior.
#2: Had a guy working at a tech company (camera's all over the place) steal a tablet/i-pad from a room. The tablet he stole was back at the company for repair, so the idiot got fired for stealing a broken item.
#28
Worked in kitchen. A co-worker got caught attempting to steal a bag of napkins. He put a whole pile of them in a paper bag, then looked up at the security camera, then tried to subtly put the napkin bag under the counter.
Someone found the bag filled with napkins, so they checked the security cameras. And the guys behavior was so sketchy, it was obvious he was trying to steal them.
Managment decided that if he tried to steal these, he probably had already stolen other things, and they fired him - it was his first and only offense.
Right after he got fired, covid started. Last I heard, he spent all of covid unemployed, struggling to buy insulin for his girlfriend. I never imagined someone's life could be so wrecked by napkins.
I felt bad about the whole situation, but I had nothing to do with it. He was probably stealing the napkins because he couldn't afford toilet paper.
#29
Back when the Internet was newish I worked for a company you have absolutely purchased fuel from... and we hired a guy to come and sort out some infrastructure issues and work out who was using all the bandwidth.
A month later we got a bill for like $27,000 for "bandwidth overrun".
Turns out that within an hour of being in the building he had set up a Napster node and was downloading every file in there, and re-sharing them.
When we fired him he had tears 😭 in his eyes and was genuinely destroyed... he just kept saying "But I read the Employee Handbook and there was nothing in there saying I couldn't do that!".
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