Being a professional and acting like one are, unfortunately, two different things. Although one expects a certain level of responsibility and decorum in the workplace, that isn't always the case. Some people throw caution—and their careers—to the wind by acting terribly. Keep reading to discover some of the most unprofessional employees these Redditors have ever seen while on the job.
1. All That Glitters Isn’t Gold
A girl I worked with hated our manager, so she mailed a glitter bomb to the store with the manager’s name on it. The device worked as intended. The manager opened it, and was coated in sparkles. The co-worker who mailed it was there and began to laugh uncontrollably over it.
During her laughter, she basically confessed that she did it because she hated the manager. So the manager fired her. Then, they got into a huge argument about not being able to lawfully fire someone over a joke. The co-worker eventually stormed off, and I got to clean up the glitter.
2. Bottle And Canned
I had an employee—a nurse—who was drinking on the job. She would sneak booze in a plastic water bottle. We became suspicious when she began behaving erratically. Then, we noticed that she was extremely possessive of her water bottle, and she never let it leave her sight or let anyone else near it. But then one day, she finally slipped up.
She left it at her desk when she went to the bathroom. So, we sniffed it, and she was busted. That woman was a hot mess.
Freepik, lifeforstock
3. Rubbed Out Of A Job
An employee kept rubbing a pregnant co-worker’s belly three times after being asked to stop. Then, he asked her if her husband was good in the sack. I fired him, and he asked if we could still be friends, to which I said, “No”. He then tried to file for unemployment after only working there for three weeks part-time.
4. Wreck And Roll
I was part of a group of IT contractors who were put together for a large international project. The client would get us apartments to live in at each implementation site for 6-12 months. A member of my team got into a disagreement with the CTO when he came to visit our site. This resulted in her screaming personal attacks at him in the hallway when he tried to step outside to de-escalate the argument.
She was fired on the spot. Her reaction was chilling. She proceeded to go back to the apartment provided by the company and completely wreck it. The site was in the middle of the desert, and she had opened all of the windows and doors, turned the AC on max, stopped all of the drains and turned the water on, and threw red nail polish all over the bathroom. It was the most extreme breakdown in a professional environment I'd ever seen.
5. The Gasbag Was A Goner
When I was in a meeting with some people that came up from Netflix, one of the women from sales—who didn't even need to be there but was often very pushy about getting into meetings and usually got her way—let one rip, and it stunk BAD. It was a relatively small boardroom, and it got quite hot during the winter. So, this normally unpleasant room was now filled with an extremely unpleasant odor.
It was a scent that painted a picture of an abandoned old folks home, where the trash bags of dirty diapers and moldy soft foods were left to sit and rot away in the building. It was a very obvious stench, to say the least, and we all heard it and knew who it came from. However, as mature adults in their place of work, obviously, no one said anything.
The meeting continued until the woman who passed gas, overwhelmed with embarrassment, interrupted the meeting in order to blame the indiscretion on one of the Netflix people. It was extremely awkward, completely derailed the meeting, and I believe even legitimately angered both people from Netflix. She was fired before the Netflix people headed back to LA.
6. High Volume Vacancy
A few years ago, I worked at a restaurant, and we had an annoying new hire. They were one of those "I'm too good for this” types. It was this kid's first job and their first day out of training. One of his tables was a family with two small children, who were being obnoxious, but it was a family restaurant, so that was to be expected.
While walking away from the table, he muttered something along the lines of, "Shut up your kids". Except he didn't actually mutter those words, he spoke them at a normal volume. The mother overheard and was not pleased. He was sent home and invited not to return.
7. Shut Down And Fired!
I worked in pizza delivery, and we had a guy—a fellow manager—who tried to shut down the store five hours before the time that corporate had set for us to close. He clocked every person out and sent them home, then just refused to take any phone calls or anything like that. He was immediately fired after our boss found out, and he even tried to come to work the next day like everything was fine.
8. His Job Went Down The Toilet
One of our warehouse workers was a young man about 25 years old. He was suspected of having a substance problem, mostly because of absenteeism and because he just seemed off at times. One day, he called our office manager from the back parking lot of our building and said that he had an upset stomach and had pooped in his pants.
She told him that she would try to find a change of clothes to bring out to him. I wish he’d listened. Instead, he ran into the building and into the bathroom off the lobby, trailing poo that was smeared on his shoes onto the floor. He then took off the soiled pants and left them in the bathroom, and ran back outside to his car. At that point, everyone else in the small office was running outside to escape the horrible smell.
Our office manager found a pair of pants in someone's locker and took them to where the guy was parked. However, she turned around when she saw him standing beside his car with no pants or underwear on. While everyone else was figuring out how to deal with the poo in the office, the guy got in his car and left. He showed up three days later as if nothing had happened. He was told to head back home.
9. Keep On Driving!
A co-worker of mine—who was a little bit too into his car—got snapped doing twice the speed limit. Instead of pulling over for the patrol car behind him, he decided to run for it. He led the authorities on a chase to the office and shook them off by hiding in the underground parking. The general manager watched it happen from his office. He took the elevator down, found the co-worker's car, and told him not to bother getting out.
10. The Spice Of Life
One day, I got a call from a customer—and what she told me was shocking. One of our employees had passed out in the truck in her driveway…and he had a glass pipe on his chest. Luckily, the customer decided to call me instead of the sheriff. The employee was picked up and brought back to the shop. When asked what was going on, he stated, "I was on break. It wasn't weed, it's just Spice". I let him know that I didn’t think this was going to work out.
11. Her Job Was A Smash Up
I worked as a bartender at a restaurant. I was cashing out a waitress who decided to enter the bar to "make herself a smoothie". After fumbling around, she dropped a glass from the hanger, and it smashed all over the counter. I told her she was going to have to clean it up before I could finish cashing her out. She then begged me for her tips, saying that she needed them right away, as her friend to whom she owed money was waiting outside.
She told me that she was going to deliver the money, then come back and clean it up. She never came back, and I had to replace all the ice and all of the fruit garnishes on a busy weekend night because of broken bits of glass that landed all over. Of course, the manager came over to ask me why the drink tickets were 10 minutes long, and I told him what had happened.
He then immediately went into the schedule and gave all her future shifts away to others. The waitress called the restaurant not even five minutes later to ask why her shifts had been forcibly given away, and the manager replied, "Cause you're fired", and hung up.
12. Hung Up On Racy Vids
I fired a guy who was in his mid-20s during his first week for browsing and downloading racy videos at work while on his lunch break. He did it on a computer located in a large open room that other people worked in at a government organization. I had caught him red-handed and warned him not to do it, already thinking this guy was going to be fired at the end of the day, but I had to go through the proper channels. Well, my ordeal was just beginning.
Then, two hours later, he did it again at the same place. At that point, I had the VPs approval to just fire him and deal with the paperwork after the weekend, so I let him go. He was shocked and didn’t say much. Being the only manager on site, I took screenshots of the sites he visited and forwarded them off to HR and the VP to document it all.
A few days later, the guy's father called the VP to complain about his son being fired. Apparently, the fired employee never thought his being fired on the day he was busted for browsing raunchy videos on a government computer in a government office was a reason to be fired, and he never told his irate father about that.
So the VP dealt with this very diplomatically, saying the employee was viewing inappropriate content at work, was warned, and continued the bad behavior. His father didn’t accept the explanation, so the VP started reading off the list of the sites that were visited. The real kicker was that the VP believed that the fired employee was listening in on his father’s conversation via another phone. Just as the sites were being read off, there was a very audible click of another phone being hung up.
13. Steered Out The Door
I worked in auto sales. One of our salesmen always seemed to be up to something. Between lying to customers, substance problems, and constant issues at home, he was impossible to manage. Unfortunately, he was the type that gave the rest of us a bad name. Eventually, he got into it with our general sales manager, and his go-to was to start making fun of our GSM’s handicapped son. The GSM took him to an office, told him he was let go, and walked out, even though I know inside he was boiling with rage.
14. Cutting Ties
I had to send a guy to a remote gas/petroleum refinery site for an inspection. He had previously been reliable on most occasions. However, on this occasion, he never showed up for the pre-substance screening test the day before he had to fly out and gave me a long-winded excuse, basically blaming car troubles. At that point, I would have gone myself to the site; however, I was just back from a bone graft to my collarbone, so I wasn't going anywhere.
The director made the final decision to send him anyway, against my recommendations. We flew him to the site to do his onsite induction, where he would do the screening test anyway. Partway through his induction, he got up and left. I called him that night but never got an answer. So, I checked with his accommodation, and the hotel claimed he had checked in within the last half hour.
I was just glad nothing major had happened. The next morning I spoke to the client, and the client informed me that the staff member apologized for leaving abruptly and had to rush off and deal with some personal issues. I didn’t press it any longer. Two hours went by, and I got a call from the client stating that they'd booted him off the site because they found him asleep on the job, and when they woke him up, he became extremely aggressive.
The consequences were devastating. The client was furious about it and said we were a cowboy of an operation for sending someone like that and told us to fly someone else up the next day to finish the job. That night we had a conference call with the client stating that we were no longer going to be working for them due to this issue, which cost our company roughly $1M from the loss of the contract.
We brought the employee in the day after he flew back to ask about his actions. I was supposed to head this up and get his side of the story, except before we even got into really discussing things, my director asked him, "If we are to test you today would you fail"? He answered, "Yes", and he was told he was being let go instantly.
He started yelling at the top of his lungs and blaming his actions on everyone else. I told him he needed to leave straight away, or the authorities would get called, and he left. Then for the next month, our administrator received emails stating how I was terrible at my job and that I should be fired for not listening to his problems, which he had never spoken to me about. But that’s not the worst part.
The employee was my brother, and I found out he was an addict. My dad and I paid for his rehab, but he never stayed both of the times he was sent. Then there were physical threats towards my mom and my family for not giving him money. That is where I cut contact. The whole situation gave me severe anxiety and depression.
15. Left Stumped
I owned a tree removal service. I hired a guy as a ground worker, and for the first two weeks, he worked great. He didn't complain, seemed to know the work, and I paid him well. During his third week working for me, we did a job that consisted of two big boxelders to be removed. It was 95 degrees out that day. I told all the guys, “Don't push yourselves too much. Make sure you're getting enough fluids, and if you need a break, take one”.
The new guy drove his own vehicle to the job as he needed to leave that day 40 minutes early to make it to a dentist appointment. We were about 40 minutes into the job when I noticed he was moving really, really slow. He just looked really unmotivated and like he didn't want to be there. We had the customer's driveway blocked off with brush everywhere.
At that point, I was still climbing in the tree, and I saw the new guy driving through the customer’s yard—about two acres—and then onto the road in a serious hurry. I called him about 30 times to make sure everything was alright but didn't hear back from him. My other employees had no idea and were in shock. They saw him hop in his truck and just dart. He decided right then and there “forget this” and left. I didn’t fire him, but I never heard back from him again.
16. He Was On A Break!
My construction company was building a new addition to a hospital. One morning, the president of the hospital called to inform me that he had just watched one of our laborers smoke dope in his truck while on break. So, I went to the job site and talked to the kid. His answer was hilarious.
He said, "Ya, I was, but I waited 'til break time". You also weren’t supposed to drive your personal vehicle to the job site for liability reasons, and you're certainly not supposed to smoke dope, even on break. We've had some winners over the years, but that kid took the cake.
Flickr, Asian Development Bank
17. Teed Off
I worked at a golf course during the summer as a lead instructor for golf camps. We had just hired two high school guys to help out. Each day, I usually went through a small teaching session and then let the students out on the course to play. So, I got through the lesson and sent groups out to different holes. I told them I would watch over holes 1–5, and the high school employees would watch over 6–9.
I gave them their own cart—a big mistake on my end—to navigate faster from hole to hole. Everything was going smoothly until about an hour later when one of the students came up to me and said there were dirt trails all over the number eight green. I took my cart over to inspect it, and sure enough, the new hires were doing burnouts and drifting on the green.
I was irate and wanted to go confront these kids and curse them out. I headed back down the fairway towards hole number seven to find these guys, and they were literally chasing a beaver around in their golf cart—a beaver on a course with literally no ponds and water traps. How this beaver got there, I have no idea, but what I do know is that these two got fired immediately after that. We decided not to hire any more high school kids after that fiasco.
18. His Fate Was Signed, Sealed, And Delivered
I was going over security footage. Pretty routine—but that day, I made a disturbing discovery. I saw an employee who didn't want to sign his contract take it, sign it, stick it down the front of his pants, and wipe it around on his junk. After doing all that, he stuck it in the secretary's inbox. His contract was burned, the secretary’s inbox was disinfected, and the employee was fired.
19. Drinks Under The Table
I had a guy who would ring up dine-in orders with five sodas, which were the amount that the people ordered, but then before they cashed out, he would remove all but one or two of them and would pocket the difference. He would give the customers the first copy, and since, of course, that's what they ordered, they never said anything. When he realized they would be paying cash, he'd change it. I only realized it after he was fired.
20. A Shining Example Of Stupidity
I had a teacher who was fired due to a spectacular display of poor judgment. I was in Grade 5, so I was about 9–10 years old. The teacher decided to reward some good behavior with a movie in class. We were given a choice between a movie about a family in the mountains and a movie about a ghost. We picked the family-related movie because we thought the ghost movie might be scary.
The movie about a family was The Shining. We watched it—unedited—in class. Some kids hid their faces through most of it. Most of us went home and had terrible nightmares, and the teacher was forcibly removed from class and was fired the following morning. The movie about the ghost was Poltergeist.
21. Swindler Of The Silver Screen
I worked at a movie theater that, like most places, had a rewards program. You showed your card to the box office cashier as you purchased your ticket, and as you earned points, you got free drinks, popcorn, and, eventually, a free ticket. This one cashier, who seemed to always have tons of cash on her person, would take the guest’s free tickets and keep them.
When the next guest would come and pay exact change, she would use the free ticket and pocket the cash. We had cameras in the box office, so it was a shock that she got away with it for so long. She got caught because a very regular guest asked to speak to our general manager and was wondering why she wasn’t getting free tickets anymore.
A few days later, the same guest came back, but she couldn't stay for her movie. She had to leave and wanted a refund. Our general manager went down to handle it for her and noticed the ticket was a free movie, so we couldn’t give her a refund. She insisted she paid the exact change to the cashier that was there a few hours before.
The manager reviewed the footage, and sure enough, she had given exact change for a ticket—no coupon—but the cashier had one in front of her and slid it sneakily to use. The general manager greeted her in the break room and told her to take her stuff home; she no longer worked there.
Flickr, Michigan Municipal League
22. The Sun Didn’t Come Up Tomorrow
I ran a theater company. One time, I hired a director who brought in her boyfriend, who had very little acting experience for a show. While I was against this, I chose to let it slide. Big mistake.
What I did not let slide was when I unlocked the theater the next morning and found them going at it on set. I normally would have just warned them and had them meet with HR; however, we were doing Annie. There were 12 little girls standing directly behind me who witnessed their on-stage activity. I ended up firing both of them, and we moved Annie to the following season.
Freepik,wayhomestudio
23. He Served Up A Bad Attitude
I used to manage a restaurant. My hosts were in charge of taking to-go orders, but I couldn't take them away from the host stand to get them ready. So, I had them grab a server who wasn't really busy and had them do it. On his second day, my host came to me and said, "I asked the new guy to grab the to-go order for me, and he told me that it's not his job".
It was the end of the shift, and everyone was putting chairs up. Instead of singling him out, I just pulled everyone together and said, "Hey. If they ask you to get a to-go order, do it. They aren't asking you because they're lazy, they're asking you because I've told them to ask you". After my little speech, the new guy turned around and started slamming chairs around. I wasn’t going to have it and fired him.
24. The Big Talker Got Booted
I worked in a pub. Our manager left, and they gave our assistant manager a temporary promotion while deciding what to do. They recruited and sent us an assistant who had no input whatsoever. On his first shift, he told the staff to just take whatever crisps and snacks they wanted to eat, and he would "sort it". He chilled out, standing at the end of the bar, drinking said juice and crisps for free.
Then, he would talk to customers about how he was going to whip the place into shape and sort out all the staff. He pretty much trash-talked the entire place. As it was a place that had many regulars, it really didn't take any longer than a few hours for his trash talk to get back to everyone. He came in for his next shift and was promptly told not to bother coming back.
25. Get A Load Of This Guy!
I was the manager at a local concrete plant. We hired a new yard man whose responsibilities were to drive the payloader, load the plant when needed, and keep the piles of sand and aggregate pushed up and clean. He had experience, but on a different style of loader, so I trained him for a few hours on the machine and then returned to my office.
A while later, I looked over the yard. What I saw made my blood run cold. The loader was sitting on top of the 3/4" gravel pile at about a 45-degree angle, the bucket full and raised, motionless. I called him on the mobile radio and got no response. The piles were in the far back of the yard, and for the next few minutes, I called again and again, but my calls were unanswered.
Fearing a mechanical or, worse, a medical emergency, one of my dispatchers and I ran the 150 or so meters from the office through the yard to the loader. There he was, on his cell phone. I climbed the ladder and banged on the door. He responded in a rather loud voice, "HEY! I am on the phone"! I immediately told him to dump his bucket and come down off the pile.
At first, he ignored me, but after a second request, he complied but was visibly aggravated. He proceeded to ask me what my problem was, to which I responded, "My problem is, as of right now, I need to hire someone to drive this loader. Get off the property". He was very sour about it, and as the three of us walked back to the office, I radioed the owner, who had his termination slip ready when we got there.
26. Pulling Double Duty
I worked at Walmart, where I had a co-worker in another department show up, clock in, leave for his other job for the day, return after his shift at the other job was over, and then clock out. He got away with this for more than two months. Needless to say, he AND his department manager were fired as soon as other management found out. I’m not sure if they were in on it together, but either way, it was entertaining watching them get shown out of the building.
Wikimedia Commons, Rachmaninoff
27. Judgment Day
I was a partner in a business but wasn't involved in the day-to-day management or anything much any longer. I needed to sign some paperwork, and it had to happen within the hour, so I left the gym and drove straight to the office. I was showered and clean but in casual clothing— jeans and a T-shirt. When I arrived, the receptionist said very loudly, "Can I help YOU"?
There was already something off with her tone, but I didn't really care. I simply said, "Yes, I'd like to see Mr. Hampton, he's expecting me". I should have said my name, which she maybe would have recognized, but I don't know why I didn't, and she didn't ask. She didn't pull up a schedule, ask on the intercom, call his line or anything.
She then laughed and said, "Mr. Hampton doesn't take walk-ins, Sir". This alone wouldn't be a big deal, even though I thought her laugh was rude. But then she made it so much worse. She then turned her chair away from me with her back facing me. I said, "Excuse me", and she put headphones in. There was one other guy waiting to see our office manager for a job as a courier, and he was kind of snickering and amused.
It was embarrassing and unacceptable. I then raised my voice and said, "I need to see Mr. Hampton and am going ahead. As I said, he's expecting me". She just laughed but wouldn't buzz me in. I don't know if she saw me through the glass, but the office manager ran up and buzzed me in, and greeted me by name. The receptionist went white as a sheet.
I could tell she was freaking out. I signed the papers and let my partner know what had happened. He walked out with me and told her to pack her bags, and fired her on the spot. There's no reason to treat anyone that way. A client could have turned up underdressed as well. It was absolute madness.
28. This Kid Was A Real Turkey
I managed a bowling center for about 10 years. I hired a kid who never had a job before, and he was a little on the “odd” side, but he seemed pretty smart, so I took a chance on him. About a month into his employment, a very, very large woman came in with her family. This kid couldn’t believe how big she was. He kept insisting to everyone that it was a costume, saying, “That HAS to be a fat suit”.
He kept saying it and wouldn’t give it up. He then decided to get the truth. He walked up to this poor woman in front of her entire family and asked her, “Are you really that fat, or is it just a costume”? I’ve never been so dumbfounded in my life. He was suspended immediately and fired after the HR investigation. The woman was so upset she ended up getting some pretty hefty compensation from the hotel, which was much deserved.
29. He Got Called Out
I was supervising a tech support call center. One of the female techs walked up to me, her face white as a ghost. I asked her what was wrong. She didn’t say a word, just gestured for me to follow her, so I did. She pointed me around a corner of cubes, where I found one of the agents with raunchy videos on his screen, trousers down, and hands busy.
We did him a solid. Security showed him out and packed up his belongings, wearing gloves. We told him we wouldn't press charges if we never heard from him again. I left a few months after that, but at least while I was there, nothing more was heard from him. I think, for some reason, he really wanted to lose his job and couldn't make himself quit or come up with a less lewd way to get himself fired.
30. These Customers Got More Than What They Expected
The owner of my company was managing systems engineers at a large aerospace engineering firm. While showing a bunch of customers around their facilities early one morning, one of his engineers heard him coming and jumped out at him from between a couple of racks completely in the buff. They had been working flat out right up until delivery, to the point where the guy was working until midnight and getting in at 6 AM for the past week.
They were friends who’d been with the company for about 15 years together up to that point and used to prank each other in the office all the time. The guy just hadn’t slept much and had lost track of time. He was fired immediately. I often think about how he must have felt in those few moments before jumping out.
Freepik,wayhomestudio
31. I Rolled With It
I was going to college on the GI Bill and got a job working in hospital security. This local hospital had been gobbled up by the growing medical center. The GI Bill was going to come up short with the new policies, so when I was about finished with my degree, I had to work there for a year after I stopped taking the money or pay it back.
I was mad at myself because now that I had the degree, I could get a better job, but I would have to ransom myself. To make my life easier, my wife found me an adult pair of Heelys. It was her idea that I wear them to work because I had to walk the grounds a lot, both inside and out. I had a bad feeling about it, but she acted as if I didn't, I must not like her gift. I should’ve listened to my gut.
I wore them on a Sunday shift because not much went on, and it was glorious. I was rollerblading like a kid in the 90s. However, unlike rollerblades, Heelys have a chunky back made of rubber, positioned roughly where a rollerblade brake is, but it’s not a brake. I discovered that on a perimeter check when I decided to take a hill as if I were on rollerblades.
I was quickly going way too fast, had a lot of hill left, and ditched. Miraculously, I only sustained a scuffed pant leg and scraped the radio. Also, miraculously, I was just off camera when I fell. I wasn't fired immediately, but I was fired the first time my shift overlapped with the manager. I pretty much knew what was coming. I shook his hand, said my goodbyes, and left. I got two part-time jobs immediately, which I built on. I didn't try to get fired, but it worked out.
32. Double Discharge
I hired a new server, and a few hours into his shift, he took a break. I got a phone call from the owner of the motel across the street a few minutes later. He apparently got into an argument with his girlfriend and smacked her. The motel owner saw this and confronted him. As a result, he pointed at his car and told her he had a machete in there, and if she didn't mind her business, he would cut her head off with it.
Needless to say, he was fired on the spot. The next day, the convenience store across the street hired him. My wife was walking by, and he threatened her in front of his new co-workers. We knew the owners well, called them, and he was again fired on the spot. Thankfully we never saw that psycho again.
33. Stuff It!
I was a retail manager. I had an employee who we hired for a seasonal position. She worked pretty well but was kind of loud and obnoxious. She liked to sneak food to her cash register and eat between customers, despite a couple of warnings. I thought I saw her with food at her register again, so I went to investigate. As I walked up to her, she had a full-on fast food meal sitting in an open drawer, with a customer in front of her.
She realized I was standing behind her and said, "What are you looking at"?! She was fired on the spot. But the nightmare didn’t end there. She even went as far as to purposely bump into me while leaving and started screaming that I hit her. She had announced that she was pregnant a week or so earlier, so, of course, that played into the drama. She told me she was going to sue me for hitting her and her baby.
She was bananas, and nothing ever came of it. She called the district manager later that week to complain about me. I had already sent the DM the camera footage, so he just politely told her to get lost, and we never heard from her again.
34. What A Bummer!
One of our delivery drivers was supposed to be training a new employee—basically driving around and introducing them to routes and customers and that type of thing. Instead, he told the new driver to just drop him off at the park down the street. When my boss drove 15 seconds to the park, he found him doing smoking with some of the people who live in the park.
Of course, the dude got fired. Then about a month later, we got a call from a customer saying that he was walking in the middle of a busy intersection with our company's shirt on!
35. Their Call Time Was Up
I used to manage a call center for a large corporation with a few stores that had retail counters. Corporate would require these guys to have a minimum phone time, or else you'd run the risk of being written up. The higher-ups, in their infinite wisdom, decided that hold time was just as good as actual talk time. So people came up with a loophole. There were a lot of employees manipulating their phone times, like calling their own cell phones and putting themselves on hold.
I wrote up a few employees for these actions. We fired one employee for typical reasons like being disobedient, disrespectful, etc. Whenever we fired someone, we reviewed all their company emails to make sure we took care of any unfinished business. We found an email string between him and another employee who worked on a retail counter, showing off their long hold times with actual customers.
They'd bad mouth the customers saying how stupid they were. Some customers were waiting 15–20 minutes for help just so they could get their daily phone time up. Normally, I hated having to fire someone, but that one was easy.
36. His Racket Ultimately Registered
I worked for a well-known clothing store, and my friend was closing up for the night along with another manager. As they were closing up, they were chatting; it was Friday night, so they were asking about weekend plans, etc. The manager said he was too broke to do anything. My friend took out one of the cash bags, went to grab something else for a second, came back, and started doing the cash for the night.
The store had this policy that if they were under or over €100 ($110) they didn't question it.
So as my friend was sorting out the cash for the night, the manager started talking about his plans. My friend asked, "Didn't you say you were broke"? The manager said something about some cash he forgot he had. My friend was suspicious but kept quiet.
The following day, the manager was off, but my friend was working. He went to the head manager and told him his suspicion that the manager had taken some of the cash. They checked the security camera for the previous night, and sure enough, in the split second my friend was away from the cash bag, the manager came up and grabbed €50 ($55) from it.
Then, they checked the footage and realized that this guy had been swiping €50–€100 ($55–$110) every night he closed the till. He varied it so it was never exactly the same and kept it under the "something went wrong here" limit. The head manager called him to come in. He told him someone had called in sick, and they needed him to cover.
I guess he figured they were on to him, and he never showed up. He was from a different country. I suspect he went back home because he was never heard from again. They estimated he took a serious amount of money because he worked at the company for several years and regularly closed the till.
37. Dino Was Finally Done
Early on in my career, I was a manager for a big Fortune 500 company's call center. The building we were in was built in such a way that you had three floors, and in the middle of every floor, there was a square hole that allowed you to look all the way down to the ground floor, with a big light on top, so the building was very bright.
On the ground floor, there was a set of computers that everybody could use to do all their non-work related stuff, check email, Facebook, etc. One evening I was working a late shift when one of the security guards came over to me and asked me to come with him. So, I followed him to the balcony, and he pointed downwards. I can’t believe what I saw.
A guy who wasn't on my team directly but was part of the same language group I was a manager in was sitting behind one of the PCs in the middle of the floor, watching lewd videos and giving himself the old "inside the pants rub down". I instantly started laughing at the absurdity of the situation. My laughter caused him to turn around, which in turn, caused his schlong to pop out of his pants as he looked up with a deer-caught-in-the-headlight look.
The absurdity of the situation was hilarious, but what made it even better was that we showed him out of the building and told him to come back the day after to collect his things and his termination of employment form. When I told my manager about it later on, he said, "Oh, Dino was at it again, was he? Yeah, we've been trying to catch him for ages. He used to jerk it in the bathroom, but we never were able to catch him".
38. Quick-Fire Hire
I was a house manager for a men's ministry. We took people in, typically right from prison or other situations where they needed to get back on their feet and back into society. We got a new guy sent to us who had the shortest time of anyone there at three days. Within those three days, he complained about the amount of work that was expected despite signing paperwork that he'd be willing to do it.
He also left food and dirty dishes in the living room, left a broken, raw egg on the floor outside his room, took food from someone else, passed out watching TV, sold his meds for booze money, and got so trashed he slipped and fell, resulting in him going to the hospital. We told the people who were his counselors that he was just not going to fit in and had them pick up his stuff while he was in the hospital.
39. His Career Was Fried
I was a sous chef at an upscale restaurant in a historical tourist place in Virginia. I had a fry cook get mad at a server who decided to bypass talking to me and speak directly to him. They proceeded to argue about how hot the fries were that were sent out, and before I could calm the situation, he pulled up a basket of hot fries and slung the contents at the server.
The server sustained some minor burns, but fortunately, the fry cook’s aim was bad, and most of the fries hit her waist area, which was covered by an apron. The fry cook was immediately sent home and later fired. I also think he had some charges laid against him as well.
Freepik, kues1
40. Move It Or Lose It!
When I was young, I was with my uncle in his car. We found a distributor truck parked in the middle of the road, horizontally occupying both lanes. We waited, and when we saw they weren’t planning to move, my uncle got out and gently told them to move, so we could pass. They said, “Yeah”, but we waited another five minutes, and nothing happened.
So, my uncle got out again and told them to move, now more firmly. The guy cursed at him and said, “We are working. Don’t you see? Go another way”, and they laughed. Well, there was something that they didn’t know. Then, my uncle calmly called his best friend, who was the manager of that distribution company. He told him the issue and the number of the truck. His friend immediately apologized and hung up.
It seemed very rude, but then we saw that his friend called the truck's radio, and we heard everything. The manager was very angry and first told them to move, then leave the truck there, and go home. He fired them at the spot over the radio.
Flickr, U.S. Department of Agriculture
41. Cleaning Up The Mess
My first boss worked for a phone company that purchased one of the first prepaid cell phone start-ups. This was a bad deal because it came with all their baggage, including employees, and was a total mess from top to bottom. From Syndicate ties and money laundering to the old manager banging several of the female employees.
The women got extra perks for being his friend, like extended time off, overtime pay, etc, when they did not work. It all fell apart when they learned about each other and got into an argument over him at work! He was fired, and the women were put on probation since they were afraid of losing their jobs if they said no. After that, my boss was promoted and had to take over this mess. In six months, he fired 18 people.
One young guy had “family” connections and major anger management issues. He was not logging in to phones, taking two-hour lunch breaks, etc. One day a co-worker gave him grief about slacking off. He walked away and returned with his heavy desk phone. He went behind the guy who was sitting in a chair and yanked him backward, sending the poor guy sprawling onto the ground.
The young guy proceeded to beat the other one with his desk phone, sending him to the hospital. He was taken into custody and fired. In another instance, one of the ladies earned extra money during lunch breaks by giving her male co-workers a…release in the bathroom, for a donation. At the Christmas party, she got caught in the restaurant bathroom red-handed by one of the higher-ups. She and the guy were both let go.
42. Her Dirty Behavior Was Not Amusing
I worked at an amusement park with over 200 employees working under me. We had a guy accusing a girl, who was about 6'7" tall and the size of Andre the Giant, of harassment. Both were employees. In the end, two guys accused her, but at first, there was only one. He claimed she had been talking about doing the deed with him and saying very inappropriate things to him, despite him saying no.
That kept happening, and one day, she went too far, and he had to stop it. For documentation and for talking to her, it helped if we knew as many details as possible, so we asked him for more details if he was comfortable with sharing. He wasn't at first but then decided to tell us. She started off with her usual, saying something along the lines of "I'm gonna [do] you real dirty".
He asked her to stop, and she continued on with something like, "Do you know how dirty I am"? He again asked her to stop, then with a straight face, she said, "I've [done] my dog". The guy said he went and threw up. We interviewed two others, both of who had similar crazy stories, one who had also been told about the dog. When we interviewed the girl, she didn't deny anything and just left. The whole thing still haunts me.
43. What A Rotten Tomato!
My friend got me a job at a good place as a cook. After a week or two, he started telling me about the guy they fired before me, who I replaced. He had only worked one day and came in high, and wasn’t doing much work. As he was sitting there doing nothing, one of the managers was trying to make a side of fried tomatoes, but they accidentally got taken, and he had to replace them a couple of times.
After finally getting this plate ready to go out, the new guy reached over and grabbed a fried tomato slice, and ate it. This place was very strict about how many pieces of food make up a side, so the manager was going to have to fry another tomato slice. The new guy was fired on the spot. A few weeks later, he was charged with pouring gasoline on his girlfriend and setting her on fire, so I guess it was a good thing they let him go.
44. Delivery Don’ts
I was a general manager at a Jimmy John’s. It was a lunch rush, and we had about 30 deliveries ready to go out the door. I looked at the dispatch screen and the software used to route delivery drivers and saw that Frank was up. I asked a co-worker where he was, and he responded he saw him out front. I looked through the front window, and this kid was weighing out a bag on his dashboard for his friend.
Every customer in line, eating, and walking in could see this kid holding an ounce of weed in his hand! I ripped the delivery topper off his car, told him to give all of his delivery slips to a driver I was going to send out, and to never show up again. I felt bad because I knew he needed the job, but at the same time, he was being stupid. I didn’t call the authorities on him, so he got off pretty easy.
45. His Transcript Got Him Tossed
We had a new chemical engineer on the job at a refinery. He was doing great. He was a quick study, and everyone liked him, but then his transcripts caught up with him. He was not a chemical engineer. He did attend freshman year at the college he said he got his Bachelor of Science from on his resume, but that’s it. He totally lied about graduating and being an engineer, so he was fired.
46. Smile, You’re On Camera
I used to work at a large fast-food chain. Every three months, there was a big full-day top-to-bottom examination of the entire shop by a company-appointed reviewer. We generally knew they were coming at some point, but it was completely unannounced. If the company actually allowed enough money for the stores to follow through with the head office’s procedures it would have been fine, but they didn’t.
So the stores would always freak out when the person showed up. The reviewer came, and an employee who we suspected was selling dope outside of company hours—and some suspicion of during—walked into a cold room, grabbed something out of his pocket, and accidentally dropped an acid tab onto his hand. Instead of hiding it back in his pocket, he decided to ingest it.
All this happened while the reviewer was checking to make sure all the cameras were working properly, hence, it was all seen live by myself and this reviewer. The guy was fired on the spot and called the reviewer a name. He ended up dealing full-time and was taken into custody for it, narrowly escaping prison.
Flickr, Diplomatic Security Service
47. He’s Gone
A friend of mine worked for a kitchen supply company that sold large equipment for restaurants. He basically just checked out and didn’t feel like doing much of anything after a certain point. He was in sales, and part of his job required him to fill out reports when he made a sale. He realized pretty quickly that no one would ever check them, so he ended up filling them out exclusively with Grateful Dead lyrics.
No one caught on for quite a while—until he went up for a promotion. During the promotion process, management checked all of his reports and noticed what was going on. They fired him on the spot.
48. Bathroom Banksy
Repeat complaints had been made by the custodial staff and security regarding "issues" in one of the lavatories. The culprit was eventually caught and fired. On multiple occasions when working late, they had apparently gone to the toilet before leaving, then proceeded to smear poo all over the cubicle walls. One night she was caught red-handed, or more accurately, brown-handed, leaving the cubicle after her most recent Banksy.
49. Martha Was History
I was the director of a county history museum, and we had just installed a new security system with cameras and motion detectors in each room. It also recorded when the two entry doors were locked and unlocked at the start and end of each business day. One Monday morning, I checked the video replay from Sunday. What I saw left me in shock. It was Martha, the weekend receptionist, and her boyfriend…making out on the front desk.
They had to stop when the front door opened, and several museum guests entered. Martha and her beau waited until the guests left, then went into the restroom to get busy. While they were busy in the bathroom, a visitor came into the main entrance, walked around several rooms, and left. Martha and her beau emerged 45 minutes later, then left for lunch but cleverly left the entrance doors open.
They knew that if I checked the security open and close log for the weekend, the museum still would appear open for visitors. They left the museum wide-open, unattended for another hour and a half when they returned from lunch. While they were out, several guests came in, viewed the exhibits, let their kids trash the children’s discovery room, rummaged through the front desk, took some bills out of the donation box, and left.
We were very fortunate those guests didn’t take any art or artifacts or go upstairs into the office area. Of course, after seeing all that, I called Martha at home, told her what I had seen, and fired her. What really made me mad was that I liked Martha, and until that day, I thought she was a solid, responsible employee.
50. Party’s Over
I came to open the restaurant and found that things weren't quite right. Things like there were way more glasses left on the end of the bar than would be normal for after-shift drinks, and there were quite a few barstools and chairs that were not flipped up on the bar or table. When I went towards the office, I spotted a sink broken off the wall in a staff-only bathroom. But that wasn’t the worst part.
The office by that bathroom had a chair in it that had poo mashed into the seat with a ridge line running down the middle of it to resemble a rear-end crack. At that point, I was like, "What happened here last night"? and walked out of the office area back to the restaurant floor, where I noticed a disheveled-looking waitress sleeping on one of the booth benches.
The cleaning crew would come in early, and one of them then told me that one of the managers was there when he arrived. He woke up from the noise but was completely trashed, and the cleaning crew found him taking a leak on the empty kegs stacked outside the cold room before he stumbled out. We contacted the owners, and they came in to see what on earth had happened.
They were confused because the manager who was seen waking up was not working the night before. It turned out that he and some of his friends came by at closing time the night before and started carrying on with an after-party with the staff who were on duty. The manager who worked that night was convinced he could go home when he was done with his work, as the partying manager said he would lock up.
We assumed that the manager got busy with the waitress on the chair in the office because that spot was out of view from the windows and security cameras. The manager who was working got reamed out and narrowly avoided losing his job for such poor judgment. The waitress got suspended for a week. The trashed manager must've been passed out because he didn't respond. He came in at around 2 PM, still pretty trashed, apologizing and saying he didn't know what happened. He tried to clean the poo off of the chair with paper towels, then was promptly fired.
Sources: Reddit,
