30 Dumb Ways To Get Fired On Day One, As Seen In These Entertaining Examples
While some people gather plaques for being the employee of the month, others can’t make it through day one without being shown the door. Whether they’re late for work, impatient with clients, or simply unable to do their job, their career at the workplace often becomes shorter than the hiring process itself.
Examples of some of the shortest work experiences were discussed by members of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community. The employers and managers among them were asked to share stories of firing someone on their very first day, and they had plenty. Their stories cover everything from sleeping at work to scratching lottery tickets, stealing computers, and much more. Scroll down to find the surprising reasons people were fired on the list below.
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I didn't fire this guy personally but I did one better, I arrested him.
I'm a police officer in the UK, I was forced to help on a recruitment event in our headquarters where applicants turned up, listened to a talk and did a few exams. Almost all wore suits or shirts and ties, except one... One was wearing a black polo shirt, black combat trousers and tactical boots, wierd and a bad impression but whatever.
Whilst they do the exam I went into the yard for a smoke, all the applicants had to park in a certain area, which was just by the smoking shelter. One car stood out, it looked just like our unmarked cars, exactly like our unmarkeds. I was a little confused so I had a closer look at it. It had radiator lights and on the back seat was a police issue stab vest.
I thought that it must be one of our cars parked in the wrong place, it happens. After the exam they left, I watched them leave and lo and behold polo shirt man gets in the "unmarked car". Immediately I jump in a real unmarked and take off after him. I found him 2 streets away *putting blue lights on* and driving through a red light. I overtook him, put my lights on and blocked him. He gets out waving a fake warrant card telling me he was en route to an emergency.
Arrested for impersonating a police officer. He was also suspected of doing the same in about 3 other forces.
I'm a teacher.
I was on a committee to hire a new 5th grade teacher.
I was showing her the ropes and monitoring her in class behavior. I watched this bonehead tell a student "I don't like you very much. Figure it out yourself."
The next thing I showed her was the door.
In the exit interview (had on the walk to the door) I demanded an explanation and she said of the student she 'didn't like' she said "He was wearing designer jeans. You know his life is all peaches and cream, taking from us little guys." I say "Did he make an inappropriate comment to you about money?" She says "No. But I know their kind."
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Tl;dr: 30 year old woman was classist against a 10 year old.
He tried to buy weed off a customer just because the customer looked like someone who might have weed. He didn't.
I got to fire my co-managers sister who called 5 minutes before her first shift and said she'd be there in an hour because she just sat down to dinner with friends.
>What do you mean you just sat down for dinner? Your first shift is in 5 minutes?
>Yeah I know. But we were out and decided to go for dinner. I'll still be there, just a little late.
>An hour isn't a 'little' late. Be here in 5 minutes or don't bother coming in at all.
>But
>Yes she did. See you in 5, or not at all
>But
EDIT: wow this blew up! RIP inbox. And gilded Thanks anonymous! To answer the most common questions:
My co-manger was actually happy about it. She knew her sister would be a s****y employee and only agreed to hire her because we were desperately short staffed and she could start immediately.
And to those asking if an hour is that big a deal, yes. Yes it is. This was a hospitality position and the roster is based around expected volume of customers. An hour short staffed means less customers served, which means less money through the till short term and pissed off customers which means less money long term.
It's not about the hour. It's about the fact that her behaviour was unprofessional, irresponsible and inconsiderate. If that was what she'd do on day one, imagine what she'd be doing by day 100
I worked at a drugstore.. They hired some girl and on her first day behind the counter alone she spent 20 minutes scratching unpurchased lotto tickets and throwing away any losers until the manager saw what she was doing on the security camera and booted her.
The job hours were from 8am to 4:30pm, Monday through Friday. Our new hire showed up about 10 minutes late on the first day. Normally 10 minutes late isn't that big a deal to me, but it was his first day, and I had pulled 3 other staff members into our 8am meeting so we could discuss the training schedule with our new hire.
So we are already in our meeting when the new guy walks in. He doesn't apologize for being late - he just sits down as I'm going over the training schedule for the week. After a few minutes of listening to us discuss what he's going to be doing for the rest of this week, he raises his hand and says, "Can we reschedule the afternoon sessions planned for today and tomorrow? I have to leave at 11 today and 12:30 tomorrow." This was the first time I was hearing about these plans.
I asked the 3 staff supervisors to give me an opportunity to speak with the new guy alone for a few minutes. They leave the room, so I start talking to the guy about how he can't just change his schedule without running it by management first. As I'm talking to this guy, he gets a text. He looks down at his phone and puts his hand up, as if he were telling me, "I'll be with you right after I finish reading this text".
As soon as he finished reading the text and looked back at me, I said, "This isn't going to work. Please make sure you take everything you brought with you and do not return. I'll have HR email you your separation papers." He seemed pretty shocked and asked what he did wrong so I told him. He tried to explain himself, but I told him that it's best if he finds somewhere else to work.
When I started at my current job, my boss told me over and over again that she knows people have lives outside of work and families and responsibilities and if I ever need to go out during the day or start late or leave early, I just need to let her know and she'll do whatever she can to make it work. It took months before I felt like I had proved my worth and earned the right to actually make use of this offer. Just announcing that you're leaving early, without asking if it's OK, on your first day?? I could never.
My chef hired a guy who was less than a week out of prison for dealing. He was just going to wash dishes. Seemed like an ok guy, just looking for some work because he had just done 5+ years. So, day one, he goes to head chef and asks, "Hey man, you know anybody here who wants to buy h****n?"
Out the door 2 hours into his first job out of the joint.
I worked at a popular teen/college kid clothing store. I wasn't the manager, but I trained new hires. This one girl shopped at the store a lot and we were excited to hire her.
She was let go because she was late, was caught trying on clothes instead of greeting, and apparently laughed when anyone asked for a size larger than a medium.
Her family showed up at the end of her shift, and tried to buy $2k-$3k worth of clothes with her employee discount. Corporate policy sucks, so they got a good portion of it. Her mom tried to bring it all back years later (completely worn/destroyed) and threw a fit saying she should get full price because the girl had died. Guess who we could all see sitting in her mom's car?
Edit 1: added a word for clarity
Edit 2: Because a lot of you are asking, the store is American Eagle.
Probably too late to the thread – but I have a story where I had to fire a staff member on the Sunday BEFORE I started work. Year was 2006.
When I first moved to London UK from New Zealand, I got a job managing a Taxi call centre – I knew nothing about Taxis, my previous experience was in managing Retail and then Banking call centres.
Anyway some investor had bought up a bunch of mini-cab companies and consolidated them in to one professional/office environment.
So I got the job and was due to start on the Monday – I got a call from the founder who asked me if I could urgently drop in to the office to sort something out – he was at some airport about to board a flight to London back from Thailand – he didn’t give me any details but I agreed to see what I could do to help.
I arrive and there is about 15-20 Eastern European drivers outside hanging around outside the office. They were obviously angry/upset about something but they didn’t know me so I walked past and swiped my access card and went in to the building.
There was about 10 call centre staff inside, some of who I had met as part of my interview process so at least I was recognised so they could answer my questions.
Turns out that the drivers were upset that the dispatchers were giving all the more lucrative airport jobs to their friends/family/etc.
I thought that’s impossible because I was told that the system was automated and delivered the job to the nearest taxi (Basically the system would automatically send a job to the driver’s PDA, the driver would then accept the job, then drive to the pick-up location to pick up the customer).
The dispatcher was only required when something out of the ordinary happened, i.e the system wouldn’t allocate a job as well as a human because it would simply allocate a job based on distance “as the crow flies” rather than a more practical “closest car by driving distance”.
I logged in to the dispatch system and used the user guide – which was in badly translated English (the system they were using was Russian-built).
And I finally found a report of jobs that were allocated – there was a column on the report indicating which car number the job was allocated to. There was another column indicated the job was manually changed from say car 42 to car 89.
About 30% of the jobs that day had been manually changed. I wasn’t 100% sure if this was suspicious or not because well I knew nothing about the taxi industry! I needed more data!
I was able to manually look up the car numbers and find the names of the drivers.
I spent about an hour manually compiling a list that basically had cab numbers and driver names and it basically looked like:
Drop-off location -> Job Allocated to -> Manual Change to:
Gatwick Airport -> 23 Nowak -> 99 Khan
Heathrow - > 56 Kowalski -> 11 Ahmed
Heathrow -> 78 Wiśniewski -> 45 Hussain
Gatwick Airport -> 12 Wójcik -> 32 Ali
Gatwick Airport -> 1 Kowalczyk -> 101 Akhtar
99% of the airport jobs were clearly switched from names belonging to one ethnic group to another. Looks suspicious I think – so I decide to confront one of the dispatchers.
I sit down next to the dispatcher who is about 30 years older than me and probably been a taxi dispatcher longer than I had been alive and say “Hey so you know what’s going on outside right? I just want to hear what you thought about it”?
He immediately stands up, smashes his keyboard in to the monitor, bits of keyboard flew everywhere! (the monitor didn’t actually break – it was a massive old-school CRT monitor and the keyboard was flimsy plastic). And he walked out and was promptly chased down the street about 20 metres and cornered by the drivers waiting outside – it was very dramatic but amazingly no punches were thrown.
The dispatcher was dragged back inside by the drivers who managed to get in to the office because one of them must’ve held the door from closing as the dispatcher made a run for it.
And they demanded that I fire him on the spot or they would all quit.
And faced with about 15-20 angry dudes with an old dispatcher in a head-lock in the middle of a call centre, I fired the dispatcher.
TL;DR: The story of how I spent a Sunday in London learning how to be a taxi dispatcher.
My old manager (matron at a psychiatric secure hospital) told me of a guy who was employed as a healthcare assistant, working with people with a learning disability. Part of his role involved escorting patients into the community to help them with shopping. He took his first charge to a shopping centre and proceeded to spend £250 on their debit card buying electronic goods for himself...which he then brought back to the hospital and asked for them to be stored in the staff room until the end of his shift. He left with the police.
If he had the gumption to do that to people with learning disabilities, he deserves the ride downtown in the cruiser. SMH!!!
Know someone who works at a warehouse that stores and ships boxes of pharmaceuticals. There are some understandably pretty tight handling rules so nothing goes missing and everything is stored properly.
One day they had a guy start that asked if they should open the oxy to count them to make sure that there was as many in the bottle as it said there was. He asked multiple people this, was gone shortly after.
I’M TOTALLY NOT TRYING TO STEAL ANY OXY. *sneaky heist music plays 🎶
IT position, supposedly had a BA in computer science with 2 years experience in relevant technical position. I didn't interview him.
We very quickly discovered that his computer abilities were non existent, started asking questions until he broke down and said he lied on his resume because he wanted to make more money. His previous job was drywall installation.
We gave him a list of software he needed, available via a URL. He didn't know what to do with a URL or what a URL was and then it quickly unravelled. It was about 3 hours because the first 2 were paperwork.
He asked my boss out. She said she's married. He then asked her if she's up for casual sex.
The most memorable firing I witnessed was this man who got hired as VP of Marketing. He thought the title gave him the right to be late on his first day for an important meeting with our board members, VP and CEO. Though irritating, he was given a pass since he was new and rewarded with a second chance to impress.
This proved to be useless as he was later heard propositioning our new interns for sex in exchange to be in this imaginary marketing campaign that supposedly would come with endless perks and cash. The CEO personally escorted him out and kindly told him to go f**k himself. In the most PC way of course.
I work for a company that takes care of the HR needs of other small companies in my area. New hires often come in to fill out paperwork.
We had this guy who came in, filled out his name and social security number, gave it to us, then proceeded to steal the front desk guy's wallet and keys. Right in front of the very visible security camera.
Turns out the police knew the guy as we was a repeat offender. He lived right around the corner.
Given how bad he is at theft I am not surprised the police knew him. He probably gets arrested A LOT.
I manage a coffee shop lunchy place. Young girl came in fresh out of culinary school and had previous coffee shop experience. What could go wrong, right? The first day I had her shadow the other employees just to get a hang of the POS system and general flow of the store. Nope, customers overwhelmed her and she liked to hide in the back leaning on the ice machine. Fine. Whatever. She said she loved baking earlier on so I sent her to the kitchen to make some cookies. I'm super chill, I didn't even care what kind, as long as they were f*****g awesome and delicious she had creative control. She comes out some time later admitting she doesn't know how to make cookies and needs help. Now I'm getting bloody frustrated. As we move on into lunch rush a wave of customers flood the front of house and I was needed. I had 40 litres of soup in the back needing a titch more roux and asked her to thicken it a tad before serving. Surely she could handle that, soups and sauces being addressed in the first bloody week of the culinary school she aparently attended (I attended the same program, btw). Nope. She found a box of corn starch and dumped the whole box in. Dry. Soup destroyed. Her shift ended shortly afterwards. Turns out I forgot to get her contact information at the beginning of the shift so I had to message her on Facebook telling her not to bother ever returning. Classy, I know, but she was just one huge bloody mess I couldn't even begin to fix.
When people think "fake it to make it" works for job hunting. Sadly such people are often good at bullshitting their way through an interview. I'm the opposite, I don't even apply for a job unless I'm 100% on everything in the listing and even then I'd be doubting my skills. I'm also terrible at interviews due to anxiety so I rarely get the chance to show what I know.
A new hire posted to her Facebook page that she was starting a new job, but she was just doing it for the health insurance because she was trying to get pregnant, then she was going to quit. Basically, she was going to work there for 9 months, take paid maternity leave for a couple of months, get the medical expenses paid for, then leave.
Boss got wind of this on the first day and fired her.
That's very tricky legal territory, but essentially she had lied in her interview saying that she wanted a long career with the company then admitted online that she was just scamming them for healthcare.
Not clever of her but I think people are missing the point that this women was trying to scam HEALTH CARE - something that would be a basic right in any civilized country with a decent health care system. And of course someone in the comments has to make it about a women wanting to have a child and wanting that process not to be a complete nightmare, god forbid.
Worked retail management. On black Friday we had a new guy and his one job was to greet customers. Literally "Hi welcome to ___." Two older ladies walked in and he says "what the f**k is uuuupppp." I told him " your time working here." I clocked him out remotely and told him to enjoy his family, because he wouldn't be shopping with the $4 he made working that half hour.
I managed a bookstore that had an auxiliary calendar kiosk at the other end of the shopping center. Hired a woman to man it, did her morning training, left her alone for a bit. Went back to check on her and found half the calendars stolen and her asleep behind the curtains we used to hide back stock. I've never been so angry.
Edit: Yes, I hired a woman to "man" something. How clever all of you are for making the exact same joke. Excellent work. >_>
Wow, seriously? It's a figure of speech. Not a gender specific noun. A word can have multiple meanings.
New firefighter in my city. Had just finished 5 months academy, graduated the night before, his whole family is there, the mayor, half the city council, and the fire chief pins his badge and then he is assigned to a station. The rookie is told to report to the police department the next morning for tactical driver training (obstacle course and skid pad).
Dude shows up the next morning at the police department, an hour late, still drunk from all the celebrating from the night before. Not only fired, but arrested for DUI. That's the end of his firefighting career.
Attending a police department to receiving driver training whilst drunk is super smart /s
"Now that I'm hired, I need the next 3 weeks off starting tomorrow and the entire month of December."
He showed a relatively flat chested girl in the office the results of his wife's breast augmentation on his phone and gave her the contact details of the plastic surgeon.
I was 13 and secured my first job at a pet supply company called PAWS. after my first day we were all done cleaning up the store so we all milked the clock for the last ten minutes sitting around chatting it up. The topic of my age came up and I told them I was only thirteen. I didn't know it was illegal at the time and the job required you be 18 to work there because it was a warehouse environment.
The next morning I came to work on time and was pulled into the office. I was told I couldn't work there because I was underage. I walked 3 miles home crying like a little b***h because I thought I was fired for underperforming.
Not quite first day, but when I was in the Army, we had a Soldier who came to the unit. Within about a week of his arrival, one of my good Soldiers came and told me he'd been in the car with this new kid, and the new guy had started telling him about how cool it would be to pull out a gun and start shooting other drivers randomly. Bear in mind, this took place only a few months after the Nidal Malik Hassan massacre at Ft. Hood.
He was in the psych ward by the end of the day, and his separation paperwork (that I had to complete) was done by the next morning.
Edit:. Damn, this has gotten a lot more response than I expected, so to clarify on a few things.
-I got MY portion of the separation paperwork done by the next morning, that doesn't mean ALL the separation paperwork was complete.
-This wasn't a 'that m**********r cut me off! Man if I had my gun on me...' type of thing. The dude straight up said how awesome it would be to just start killing people at random.
Not an employer or manager, but a girl at my job showed up absolutely plastered on her first day of work. Working at a machine shop, I'm sure you can imagine that this was especially a no-no.
I still wonder why anyone would show up drunk on their first day of work. Nerves maybe?
To go back on unemployment benefits. I encountered this often in the hospitality industry in Australia, people on benefits are required to take a job if if accepted for one and some do anything to get fired.
Work at a used record store. While giving the guy the tour he mentions how we underbelly our LPS and let's us know he's just going to use his employee discount to re sell all the good stuff that comes in in our eBay Store. He lasted about an hour.
Caught him snorting some kind of pill. He probably could have gotten away with it, if he wasn't doing it in my office.
Did a Tarzan swing on a overhead hoist remote cable going some 20 feet before the cable tore out. It only took maintenance 20 minutes to fix, but he was gone by then.
Security supervisor at a hospital. At the end of my first day, the girl relieving me comes in 37 minutes late. She didn't know I was going to be there so she took her time getting there. She promises up and down that the next day she would be there on time. The next day she is no call/no show. She was gainfully unemployed after that.
I'm not a manager, but I had a potential co-worker who called in sick. I guess he didn't know that the manager didn't have to work through the evening and bumped into him at the movies. My boss told us this as he fired him the next day.
I hired someone to write about cars for a website I was editing. Saw some of their work, they seemed eager and well-educated. I thought it would be a good fit.
The very first piece of copy he turned in on his very first day...was a plagiarized copy of something I had written two years prior.
I just sent him a link to my original piece that he plagiarized, and never heard from him again.
I was a corporate field manager for a big box camping store, and my job was to travel to new locations and help open new stores. This involved a lot of hiring, building, and stocking in a short amount of time. We're not in uniform when we're in the stocking phase so it's common that no one knows who's who. There was a couple of girls that banded together and seemed to be splitting the work of one person while still managing to do it half as fast. I walked over and tried to give them friendly guidance and they didn't seem to respond positively. I came back an hour later and they didn't progress very far. When I told them that they needed to step up their game, one of them became aggressive and responded, "Or what!? Who the f**k do you think you are, talking to me like that? You ain't my boss!" She got right in my face like a WorldStar video and acted like she was going to fight me. Apparently they had forgotten that I was one of the interviewers (although it was someone else who made the choice to hire them). I said, "well, actually, I am..." They looked mortified as I asked them to follow me. I took them into the office with my VP, and together we wished them well. They begged to keep their jobs and I had to explain that laziness is bad enough, but insubordination will not be tolerated. At which point they told me to f**k myself and left.
we had a teacher have a full breakdown on their first day. Started mumbling and rocking. We had to call the ambulance.
Thing was they had done some CRT work and passed the interview/reference check with flying colours. I guess this was the day they finally snapped.
Edit: I got more stories if anyone wants to hear them
Okay a few people have asked for this.
We had a crt quit after two periods, claimed the students were behaving like animals- worst class ever etc. so as a senior staff member I went over to the class to see what the f**k was going on. Basically nothing. I asked what the f**k happened.
The kids replied that the two diabetics were late to class as they were doing their sugar checks as required after lunch. The crt thought they were faking it. They showed her their pin prick cut and she said they were still lying. They were offended but settled down.
Then the asthmatic kids started wheezing, from the stress, he asked to get his inhaler and the crt thought he was faking. Mind you on her key we have large colour flash cards of all the kids with issues that we tell them to read. Asthmatic kid was a big strong boy so he basically barged pass her at the door to get his medication.
That sent the crt off the deep end. I was like wtf.
I worked as a manager in an upscale seafood restaurant a few years ago.
We had recently hired a few more wait staff (4 staff), to cope with the customer demand as summer was starting.
Excited to train up new staff for the first time ever, three of them turned up on time and got started with their buddy staff. Guy number 4 turned up over an hour late, stunk of alcohol and BO and had dark yellow pit stains on his "apparently new" white uniform shirt.
I fired him within 10 minutes. He then proceeded to knock over chairs and pull tablecloths off tables so security was called.
First person I ever fired. I felt bad and then went out for a smoke before getting back into work.
Another reason why I left the hospitality industry.
Staff turnover too high, too easy to burn out.
I worked at a large housing and counseling center for delinquent teenage boys.
Usually about half of each new group of people hired didn't last more than a couple of weeks (they hired in 'waves' and give them two weeks of training before they have them do much on the job work).
However, the employee that topped them all was arrested during his first day of training. He was a vet, with good references, seemed level headed, etc. Great hire! Except....during a training lecture, a bunch of ATF guys showed up and arrested him for selling lots of explosives and restricted weapons without a license or documentation.
I saw someone fired on their second day, they were hired as an admin/document controller...they were functionally computer illiterate.
It took them half an hour to copy a file to a flash drive.
Half an hour.
I had to fire someone while we were doing their new hire paperwork.
The store manager interviewed him, then sent him to me (ops manager) to do their papers. This kid starts majorly trash talking the store manager, other employees, asking if any "Fine b****s" work at the door...
He then goes on to say, "mannn are you seriously having me fill out all this paperwork? You're about as r******d as the store manager!"
I said, "well lets hold off on the paperwork then! I think we are going to go in a different direction with you, as you obviously are too professional for our business"
It took him a second, but he then started acting like Eminem and s**t talked the whole way out. See ya
Not first day but close. We have a very competitive college intern program where I work. So, young guy comes in and proceeds to sleep - and I mean head back, mouth agape - for half the day. I work in an open office, but he was in a weird corner where you couldn't really see him unless you were looking specifically at his area. So, those of us around him were stunned and not sure what to do. Day two, he does the same. Day three, same thing, only this time a high-level manager came by to chat with me. He literally stopped mid-sentence when he glanced over and saw Sleepy.
"Seriously?" was all he said. He apologized and said he had to have a talk with HR.
Dude was gone within 20 minutes.
I didnt do the firing, but my supervisor did the next day.
Working the night shift where sandwiches are made by artists. Asked new employee to sweep and mop the floor.
She just stared at me and asked me what to use to sweep, I said a broom, she just kept staring at me. I handed her the broom, she proceeded to not do any sweeping and just bang the bristles of the broom on the floor. I swept. I asked if she could mop, she once again asked how.
I ended up doing everything that night and she was asked to leave the next day because she didn't do any work and slacked off.
Edit: the moral of the story is to teach your kids how to sweep and mop.
It absolutely amazed me the first time I had to teach a new employee how to actually sweep and mop.... I managed a couple different fast food places over the last 15 years. I have had to teach 5 different people (mostly over 18, 1 was 17) how to use a broom and a mop! And bathrooms..yea right wiping bleach on mirrors and not knowing what a toilet brush is... I just couldn't understand growing up and not knowing these everyday cleanliness things. Does everyone have a maid or something?
We fired a summer intern on his SECOND day, the moment he walked in the door. After his first day of work he started a "Devil Wears Prada" style blog that night on blogger and wrote some pretty scathing s**t about all of us and posted it that night, using all of our full names.
It came up on the Google alerts we setup for our company and product name, we read the blog first thing in the morning before he came in, and fired him right when he came in.
He took the blog down before 11am.
Hired a guy as a mechanic, he owned several of the type of cars our shop specializes in and did well in the interview; however, he quickly proved to have hobbyist-level skills.
His productivity was sloooooow! I always give new hires work on my own/family vehicles or a shop vehicle before allowing them to work on a customer's car. In this case he was given a front brake job on my stepson's older model. This is a gravy job, 20-30 minutes average. This guy took almost 1-1/2 hours, lost a part, started cross-threading a bolt, overtightened a bolt till it broke not once but three times, and asked too many dumbfuck questions.
Finally it was finished, I took it on an extended road test including on the freeway. There was a scraping noise that wasn't going away, in fact it started getting worse.
Got it back to the shop, lifted it on the hoist to inspect the brakes, and found both the bolts holding on one of the brake calipers were TOTALLY LOOSE. Like, *didn't even try to tighten them* loose, only 2 turns or so. If one of them drops out, the caliper rotates out into the wheel and locks it up abruptly without warning, which on the freeway will make the car suddenly swerve to the right and tumble. My stepson was driving 450 miles back to college that night!
I called the guy over to see what happened, and he looked like a guilty dog. With as much composure as possible, I explained the above to him and told him I had to let him go. He understood and packed his tools and was gone.
The interesting thing was, a week or so later his sister (who had never been there before) dropped off *her* [brand of vehicle we specialize in] and hadn't heard the news about her brother's employment demise. Without skipping a beat, she proceeded to leave her car anyway, dismissing the matter of her brother with, "Eh, not surprising..."
Hired a girl to fire watch, which is where you literally sit still and make sure nothing sets fire while someone welds. Easiest job in the world. How do you f**k it up?
This girl gets five minutes into her first job, lays down on *the ground*, and goes to sleep.
Not like she dozed off, she rolled up her jacket as a pillow and everything. On the ground. In the dirt. In the middle of our mill.
Had a new starter that was a friend of one of the team members. He was being trained by the only lady in the team who wasn't well that day and not particularly chirpy. When they were done he went to send an IM to his friend saying "Jane** must be on her rags today" but he sent it to Jane who flicked it to me, boom instant dismissal.
Seriously, guys, this is so not okay. Don't make comments about us being on our periods or on our bodies/clothes. Don't touch us. Just...don't. If you wouldn't do it or say it to or about your guys friends, don't do it or say it to us. It's really not that hard.
So I am a reporter and our interns come in and shadow us from time to time. This kid came in for his first shadowing with me and we were headed to a nicer event, one which required we wear nicer attire. He'd been asked by my editor not to wear jeans or shorts but to dress business casual: slacks and at least a nice button-up shirt or polo.
Well, he showed up late, and he showed up in jeans and flip flops. I didn't even ask my editor; I sent him home before he could walk into the event with me. Later I was honest with my editor about what happened. the intern did not return for a second day.
Edit: Id like to add I did not fire him; simply sent him home after asking if he had a change of clothes and he told me no. I had to explain to my boss why the intern wasn't at the event with me. I have no idea if she fired him or if he simply chose not to show up again.
Believe me, reporters don't make a ton of money and I know interns sure as hell don't. I worked my a*s off for 2 years taking no-pay or little-pay journalism internships. I wasn't going to embarrass him or make him feel ashamed if he didn't own proper attire. If he did not, it would have been up to him To bring that to the editor's attention when she asked him to wear business casual attire. I know she certainly would not have embarrassed him or fired him if he didn't own the proper clothing.
Extra casual waitresses were hired for a large formal wedding at a hotel where I was assistant manager. It was explained that they needed to wear a black skirt or pants with a white shirt or a black dress. One showed up in torn jeans and a tshirt with a very vulgar message on it. She said she didn't want to work a stuffy wedding couldn't she work in the public bar instead. No!
He started chopping out lines on the dashboard five minutes after leaving the shop. When I asked what the f**k he thought he was doing, he said "don't worry, I'll share!"
I worked at an upscale cocktail lounge as a bar tender. One day my boss hired this new guy to work behind the bar with us, it was rush and the bar was packed and we were all running around. Then this new guy comes up to the sink behind the bar, kneels down, puts his hair under the running faucet and then flings his head back leaving a splatter on the wall behind him, he then proceeds to smooth his hair down... at rush... in front of customers... ... He didn't stay long.
Hired a new night audit worker. Her first night alone after training she sat in the lobby and smoked weed all night, ignoring guests and saying she didn't work there (with her name tag on the front of her shirt) and watched murder mysteries on the giant TV in the lobby. 15 minutes before her shift was over she just left the building without waiting for her replacement to show up. So there was no one in the building with over 150 guests upstairs. I saw this all on camera the next day and she showed up that night for her next shift. I stopped her at the door and told her to go home and not come back.
She was perfectly fine during training but she did mention that she was a stay at home mom her entire adult life and when her husband lost his cushy job she had to work. I brushed it off as whatever since we all have to work at some point but I didn't know her "no f***s given" attitude was that bad.
I ran one of those calendar kiosks in my local mall as a second job for holiday money. Hiring was done by a temp agency located across the country, and the people sucked accordingly. Two days after we opened, I was supposed to have a new guy to train. I got a call from him saying he'd been stabbed on the bus, and was in the hospital. I asked him which hospital, and he told me. I have a buddy who worked for the local police department, and I had him make a call for me. No such person in the hospital, and no stabbings on any bus line. I called the number I had for him, and his dad answered. I identified myself, and explained that I was letting his son go from the job he had blown off. The dad was very polite, but as he hung up, I heard him screaming at his "useless f*****g c**t" son...
The store manager hired a guy contingent on his background/credit check. He had bad credit and the same manager made me fire him. So I told him his checks came back bad, he said "that should have been sealed". Turned out that he had a forgery conviction, which was in fact sealed. He laughed when I told him it was just bad credit.
3 or 4 weeks later just as I was leaving the company the later the company dropped the credit check and the store manager (in spite of my warnings) hired the guy again. He passed the check this time. Two weeks they caught him stealing computers.
Not first day, but I had to fire a delivery driver because she couldn't drive. Had a license, just couldn't drive a vehicle safely to save her life. Scared one of my other drivers, another manager, and finally was recommended to me that I do a ride-along to ensure they weren't out of their minds.
Nope, she was a horrible driver. 2 lane road, spent most of the time with wheels over the fog line because she was afraid of cars coming her way
Needless to say, I now ask prospective delivery drivers if they can drive well.
Worked in Occupational Health (medical side for people at work) and did a lot of driver screening. Had one guy apply for a job as a milkman (UK thing where they use an electric cart to deliver milk and bread) who stated no medical conditions, but had an epileptic fit right there in the room. (UK licence says must be daytime fit free for at least 2 years etc) Second time - was screening a bunch of ambulance staff who had come from a private sector firm into the NHS. Half didn't have the right licence (ie could not drive anything over 3.5 tonnes) and one had active epilepsy but refused to take meds, saying she always knew when a fit was coming, so she just pulled over.....(with a sick patient in the back????)
Went to retrieve the new hire in the cafeteria, asked them to follow me out to the work area. Starting walking towards the door.
They start to follow, then see someone they know sitting on the other side of the room. They walk away from me and proceed to have a conversation for 5 minutes. When they were done they came back to me and said they were ready to go.
I thanked them for coming in, and showed them the door.
I work in a tobacco-free workplace and the use of tobacco on the premises means instant termination. We all had to sign papers acknowledging that when we hired on. So some people get around it by walking around the back of the building into the parking lot behind us and technically getting around the "no smoking on the premises" clause.
On his first day working there, a new guy would leave his station and walk to the back of the building or get in his car and drive off the lot to go smoke. Each trip would last him about 20 minutes and he did this every hour. He was told to leave on his second day.
edit: I used to be a smoker when I hired on a few years ago but because I was never a heavy smoker (a pack a week) and it was just too much trouble, I decided to quit completely. That was about 6 months ago and still not missing it.
I'm an employee who was fired on my first day. I got a job in a deli and worked one day from 7am until 3pm. I was then told that it wouldn't work out. I had received almost no training at all that day, and was left on my own to serve customers at one point. I didn't have the guts to say anything, and just let it go.
Maybe it's for the best. If they didn't have the resources to train you on your first day, that only proves it's a miserable work environment anyway...
She couldn't figure out what the TAB key was. It was a basic data entry job - literally, see the names and addresses written on this paper? Copy it exactly into our system. That's IT.
We went through an agency, which generally gives a software literacy test; basic understanding of computers would be just fine - it's only data entry.
She would stop typing after filling in a field, grab the mouse, and move it to the other field to type. We corrected her, "it's a lot faster and easier if you just push TAB to move between the fields..." Several times. She would stop typing, cover her face with her hands, and say "oh this is too much, this is too hard!" Every time it was suggested to use TAB to move between fields.
She also got up from her desk - with her trainer/manager sitting right next to her! - and went into the bathroom to answer it every time her phone rang (5 or so times throughout the day). The manager called the agency around noontime and told them we'd have her finish the day, but to ask her not to come back tomorrow.
The agency called her right then and there on her cell phone, and of course she got up and went into the bathroom to take the call. She came back out and sat down at her desk like she was going to work, but instead just looked at the manager and said, "can I just leave now then?"
So awkward.
I've tried to teach people about the TAB key so many times, and they almost never listen. It's painful watching people stop and grab the mouse EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
Training my lifeguards for the summer when one girl couldn't swim. The test can be strenuous if you haven't done any physical activity for awhile, but this girl couldn't make it halfway across the pool without needing to be saved herself.
Parents tried to sue for wrongful termination until we had then come watch her daughter start drowning a minute into the test. People....
The fastest turnaround I've ever seen was this guy we hired in support at a tech company. Everyone knew that the structure of our network wasn't ideal, but it worked and we didn't have the resources to fix it. We showed the guy the network diagram and told him this.
He immediately declared it unacceptable and marched down to the Network Manager's office and started listing off all the reasons why the network was "wrong".
Yeah... you don't lecture the King Neckbeard on the first day, and sure as hell not when you're the lowest-level peon in the company. He was politely told to "get the f**k out" less than 4 hours into his first day.
What if this guy was right? Sometimes a new eye on a situation should help to question it
I wasn't the manager but this happened at a pizza restaurant I worked at in college when a new delivery driver was being shown the ropes...
"So where's the car I'll be making deliveries in"
"You use your own car"
"Well I don't have a car, you're going to need to provide me with one"
"I specifically asked you when you were interviewing if you had your own car"
"well I thought you meant like, do I have a way to get to work, and I do, I took the bus"
then he went around the kitchen asking everyone if he could borrow their car for the day. Shockingly, nobody was willing to hand him their keys.
What is that s....y company that doesn't provides cars for delivering?! I would have left too
I was working as a waiter in a fancy restaurant. This classy guy shows up, well dressed, well mannered, looking for a job as a cook. They needed help back in the kitchen, so they hired him on the spot.
Next morning he shows up, drunk as f**k. Not in a "had a super night out with the buddies, am still a little hungover" kind of way, but more in a "just downed a bottle of whiskey for breakfast" kind of way.
He had watery eyes, awful breath, he stuttered, struggled to walk straight but somehow managed to keep his head high, so management said f**k it, put him to work.
The very first thing he does is grab a big prawn, and manages to f*****g stab his own finger with it. Right under the nail. Lots of blood and pain.
Everybody is dumbfounded by this prowess. They immediately sent him home, maybe 10 minutes after he started his new job.
I had an employee who worked for a week. He went to a comedy club, ordered $60 worth of food and booze. When he couldn't pay, he asked if they would charge it to the company he works for, which they declined. The manager of the comedy club called me the next day to talk it over with me. I told him to go pay it that day (since it was payday). He didn't pay them. I fired him the next day.
40 something year old woman came in smelling of alcohol in a toys store for her first day as a seasonal employee. She threw up on herself in between helping customers.
When I was working at this Japanese restaurant we had to fire one of the new cooks his first day because he showed up drunk.
I actually had to go pick him at the bus station because I was the delivery driver. When I pulled up there I saw him finishing a tall boy of Bud Light. I was thinking, "Oh man, this might not be good." He got in the car and seemed okay, I offered him some gum and he accepted and thanked me.
When we got to the restaurant, I didn't see much of him because I was back out in the front, but man did I hear a lot. While the owner Carol and the other cooks were training him on what to do, he kept f*****g up and knocking things over. Carol was an intense person and liked to berate people at first, but I have never seen her as mad as when this guy accidentally lit a rag on fire.
That was it, she screamed, "You're fired, get the f**k out!" She had me drive him back to bus station, which was one of the most awkward car ride a I have ever had.
So I'm not a manager or employer, but I do get copied on all the termination notice emails for the retail locations our company has (for some reason). For terms on the first day, there's a bunch of the expected "didn't show up for training", "got a different job", "extremely late to training", etc.
There was also "fistfight with customer", "drug use", "violation of company policy" (dude tried to steal merchandise), and "arrested" (though for what, I don't know). There's probably some other great ones but none that come to mind at the moment.
Wasn't a manager but we had a kid who came into the shop and his first day of night shift they couldn't find him. Well they found him after a few hours. He cleaned off a shelf in the parts room and was sleeping on it.
Friend of mine got a job at chipotle as a cook. Got drunk the night before his first day and was hungover at work the next day. He threw up in the bathroom for most of his first shift. Didn't go back after that/wasn't asked to come back.
The only one I felt horrible about. I was training the guy, didn't do the firing. On his lunch break he was caught walking out two rolls of toilet paper to his car, explained he couldn't afford any right now.
Manager took the rolls, fired him on the spot. It's justifiable, if you'll steal TP you'll steal something else but dude, I would have let ya borrow some cash to get by if you asked :/
I work at a swanky/pricey resort. We use a commercial version of Renova TP in teal and orange and amazed at how many of these wealthy people steal it. During the lockdown we donated two pallets to our local community. I think we started a trend on our community of colorful and printed TP.
One woman didn't even make it to the interview. She came to the office and was told to wait in the hallway for the manager to call for her. She promptly started to wander around the office peeking into rooms, peoples' screens and randomly pick up and examine stuff.
I work in construction as someone who runs my own contracting business. We do everything from big renovations to even re-doing your asphalt slopped roof, depending on if I have the stomach for it (roofing f****n sucks.)
I hired a labourer once to help me with the clean up. Basically his job was to take the old roof we ripped off and threw down, pick it all up and throw it in the bin I had put in the alley from a bin rental. F****n simple task, I did it when I was like 15 years old during summer holidays.
So I show up with my buddy who works with me, we're sitting in the truck in the morning, drinking coffee and listening to the radio. There was a can bum in the alley behind the house and this guy is picking through everyone's trash for cans. I figure "big deal, I see can bums all the time." Well we get out of the truck, this guy turns out to be my hire from craigslist. Whatever. No teeth, didn't bring a lunch, he's bumming smokes off my buddy for the day, hard worker but doesn't know s**t except manual labour. Not very well dressed, not even work boots so he doesn't step on a nail and have it go right through his foot.
So at the end of the day, we're buttoning up the roof, as in it's finished. I'm putting the finishing touches on it, as in caulking and etc. I non-chalantly ask the labourer to come up the ladder. His next task is to "remove the remaining bundles of material, get the rest of the stuff ie: tools, radio etc off the roof."
I continue finishing up my tasks on the far side of the roof. We hear this banging noise from the front of property, I get up and walk to the front of the house, this f****n idiot was THROWING the material bundles down onto the owner's paving stone driveway and he'd turfed my skilsaw down too, I could tell from the roof it was bent, as in ruined.
I lost my mind on this guy. Told him to get off the f****n roof. Followed him down and told him he was finished. I asked him what in his mind made him think firing 80 pound bundles of material onto a paving stone drive-way was okay, he couldn't answer me. To anybody with common sense "get the stuff off the roof" doesn't sound like throw it off the two storey roof onto the driveway, 160 dollar power tools included.
Paid him cash for his time, told him to hit the road. I'm sure he had it all blown within a couple hours on a nice rock to smoke. The paving stone driveway thankfully wasn't cracked. Asphalt shingles are made with tar though, there were black scuff marks on it, It took some finesse to clean up. As in, I got a jerry-can of gas, and had to use that to rub the marks out.
I work in construction. The sheer volume of f****d up stories I have to tell is enough to fill a book I want to write someday when I am old enough to retire. This was just one off the top of my head.
I am a lifeguard and we take 30 minute rotations with 15 minute breaks. My manager has once told me that a guy came in first day and fell asleep on his first rotation so he was fired.
Our company hired a new receptionist, and she wanted to do something "wacky" to stand out. She showed up for work on her first day having dyed her hair blue. The company's pretty progressive and doesn't have a policy on hair dye. The president of the company stepped off the elevator and said "who are you?" She introduced herself and said "I'm the new receptionist!" He said "not anymore, you're fired" and called security to escort her out.
She lasted about an hour.
Other people in the company could (and have) gotten away with some pretty funky hairstyles, but he didn't want that to be the first impression that clients got when they walked in the door. And he was also put-off by how brazen she was to assume that would be okay without asking first.
I hired couple guys to do level 1 tech support, hired them away from teleperformance call center. First guy showed up said the other guy would probably call in sick, did it all the time. He called in sick and I told him don't bother coming in, you fired.
My organization has an all-female management team. We hired a male business manager, who started while our director was on vacation. He waltzed in the first day and tried to make a bunch of changes in the day-to-day running of departments he had no knowledge of. And then he told our Assistant Director he was a man and knew what was best. AD called Director and got permission to fire his a*s.
It wasn't her first day with the company (had a 1 day orientation then a week long training), but, her first day in the store. She argued with her mentor (new hires will spend at least 2 weeks before being released to the floor) multiple times and then managers, saying she knew better on process and stuff (she had worked at another dealership in another state). GM called her in around 2 and said "bye." She argued with him.
Another story from my time in the computer factory. We got a new guy starting day shift, supervisor caught him taking *really* detailed notes of where the high value components were stored, where the CCTV cameras were, how many security guards there were etc. Security puled him in for a "random" search, which turned up several hundred UK pounds worth of components stuffed into his socks and underwear. Cops are called. He gets firmly escorted from the building never to be seen again.
My organization has an all-female management team. We hired a male business manager, who started while our director was on vacation. He waltzed in the first day and tried to make a bunch of changes in the day-to-day running of departments he had no knowledge of. And then he told our Assistant Director he was a man and knew what was best. AD called Director and got permission to fire his a*s.
It wasn't her first day with the company (had a 1 day orientation then a week long training), but, her first day in the store. She argued with her mentor (new hires will spend at least 2 weeks before being released to the floor) multiple times and then managers, saying she knew better on process and stuff (she had worked at another dealership in another state). GM called her in around 2 and said "bye." She argued with him.
Another story from my time in the computer factory. We got a new guy starting day shift, supervisor caught him taking *really* detailed notes of where the high value components were stored, where the CCTV cameras were, how many security guards there were etc. Security puled him in for a "random" search, which turned up several hundred UK pounds worth of components stuffed into his socks and underwear. Cops are called. He gets firmly escorted from the building never to be seen again.
