Nothings off limits! Let us know your dirtiest, dumbest, or most ridiculous bad decisions at your job!

50 comments

  1. Standing up for myself.

    Sad reality.

    I run my own painting business now 3 years on and realized it pushed me to do better because of how I was treated.

    Good times

  2. Every summer and winter break in college, I did work for a temp agency.

    This one summer, I was assigned to the same company for my entire 3 month break, they seemed to really like me, and the woman who I reported to said that they’d love to have me back the next time I was on break.

    So the following Christmas break, I called her office and left a message on her voicemail just saying I was home for the next month if they wanted me to temp for them again.

    The next day, my temp agency calls me screaming at me for contact a client directly and “fires me” from temping for them.

  3. Told my friend there she was getting screwed on a bonus that others in her dept were getting and she wasn’t. Lied to management when asked if I told her. She didn’t turn on me cause she got fired too. We are still friends now 3 years later and are both MUCH better off than we were at that place.

  4. I once worked for a big industrial vehicle company in one of their warehouses. After a few weeks, I got bored of the same old put item in boxes, close boxes so I renamed a HU (holding unit) to The Anus.

    I was let go two days after when the anus arrived in Missouri.

  5. Failed a drug test after reporting my boss for doing drugs. I was the first one called in to pee. I don’t do any drugs. They ruined my life over that shit. Told prospective companies that I was drinking and high on the job. Only found out because the guy who hired me at the original company brought me in for an interview for another company and asked me what really happened

  6. I used to run heavy equipment namely a Cat 621 scraper ([https://www.cat.com/en_US/products/new/equipment/wheel-tractor-scrapers/open-bowl-scrapers/119321.html](https://www.cat.com/en_US/products/new/equipment/wheel-tractor-scrapers/open-bowl-scrapers/119321.html))

    So on the job site, we would go pick up dirt and take it to another place and spread it out. The scraper that was loaded always had the right of way. Now I worked for some shady ass mfers that would disconnect the rear brakes on the scrapers because it saved them money. In normal operation, you drop the bowl cutting edge into the ground and you have the world’s best breaks.

    I had picked up and dumped a load of dirt and was headed down the hill back to the cut and another operator was coming up the hill. I tried to slow down and could not I blew my horn and was waving him off telling him I could not stop. It was go left and destroy new building pads, go right and destroy $200k in concrete sewer pipe we put in the week before and die (The seat belts didn’t work), or stay on the road and have the other guy move. He had plenty of room to move to his right and get out of my wife. Now I was moving at about 30 mph. I tried to drop the bowl and it was not working. I even hit what is called float which releases all pressure to the hydraulics in a split second allowing them to fall. This didn’t work. I went to my foreman and raised hell about these items. The next day the super showed up and told me I was too dangerous and fired me.

    It all worked out though. About 3 months later everyone on that crew got laid off because the housing market crashed. I used my GI Bill and went to college.

  8. I worked on drilling rigs my entire life. One company I was working for was making huge mistakes while drilling a well that I believed would lead to loosing control of the well, aka a blow out. I tried to stop the job with my stop work athority even though I was not the lead supervisor. The lead supervisor overrode my stop work athority along with the superintendent in agreement with him. I refused to stay on the rig floor during the operation we were doing because I believed it to be unsafe. They did indeed end up blowing out the well, thankfully no one was hurt but it cost millions of dollars in remediation to save the well.

    So while they didn’t fire me, they moved me to a different rig they knew the contract was ending for in a few weeks. So technically I was “laid off”. It was super shady way to get rid of me.

  9. My friend got fired not once, not twice, but three times for vaping inside and on the job. Dont vape, kids.

  10. Fired for whistleblowing

    It was an NGO I was working for

    Their public image was immaculate but they were rotten to the core with corruption

    I told the boss what I found and got dropped from meetings for the next 3 weeks

    Saw the writing on the wall, wrote to respective anti-corruption agencies here in Australia and then started taking receipts

    Eventually they sacked me for saving documents on personal device

    NGO got caught out a year later

  11. 90 hours overtime in month. I was burned out, then they asked me to cover on Saturday, I told them I’m sick and can’t come and got fired on Monday.

  12. In 2013, I worked for a temp agency at a factory in town. I was doing spot welding, and it got boring VERY quickly. We were doing 10 hour shifts. So every two hours we got a break. Well, a couple of months in, they decided to switch it to 8 hours a day. With 2 hours, first break. 2 hours lunch. 3 hours of working, then home time. So, during the three hour work period, I would go sit on the shitter and play on my phone for 45 minutes. By the end of the week, the temp service called me and said I was let go for making bad parts. But my friends still worked there and said it was a setup problem. Not a line worker problem. I have since then learned my lesson. Lol

  13. By being dumb 😂

    Okay hear me out, I’m usually a rather serious worker, but I had a co-worker who was having a joint, and I didn’t had a joint in years and I could handle it very well back in those days, so when he offered me to smoke with him I was like: sure! Nothing can go wrong with smoking a joint at work right!!

    Yeah… he failed to mention it wasn’t just a joint… it was a cocktail ( hasj + weed) so I was fcking wrecked, needless to say the boss wasn’t amused, my colleague and I both lost our jobs.

  14. I was working as a security officer for a hospital and my duties included taking a vehicle off-site (down the block) to on affiliated clinics’ doors, scan the property for sleeping transients, or damage. On my way back to hospital I stopped at a 7-11 to pick myself up a Red Bull to stay awake and called out my break to do so (not uncommon with driving posts to take irregular breaks). I got canned for “vehicle policy violation” because I was using the company vehicle during my break time. I didn’t crash the car or do anything else but that, but it was my second offense, the previous one was from a year ago for the same thing. They lost their only dependable guard for that and the client soon after. I was rejected from my Corrections application during a phone interview when they wanted to catch up on recent events and I disclosed the termination. Their policy states I have to wait until a year after the day of my firing to reapply. They can go fuck themselves too. You’d think they’d see the reason why and say “oh that’s not a huge deal you meet and exceed all the other qualifications” but no.

  15. Only been sacked once.

    Basically I found myself a job at a place undergoing a civil war. My team of seven was made up of two fresh out of University managers and four older, hardened, experienced types. They used to constantly moan, bitch, and undermine each other.

    I enjoyed the work and found it interesting but I wasn’t paid enough to care about their stupid office politics so I refused to take sides.

    So the more experienced ones started sabotaging my work and the managers didn’t want to listen when I tried to tell them what was happening.

    I should have walked a lot earlier than I did. That was my mistake, I clung on for dear life to the job and almost let it ruin me mentally.

  16. I got fired for going home sick at my last job, only time I’ve been fired. Boss was screaming and pointing his finger in my face, told him I’m not bringing his alcoholic ass to work any more, then he just got more unhinged so I said “I got sick time,
    I’m going home”. He said if you go home sick you’re fired, and I did.

  17. I used to have a seasonal gig doing production work. Setting up lights, sound, and visuals for events. Owner got a contract to do New Year’s party at a hotel in south beach.

    He really underbid and only had a two man crew for a job that probably needed six.

    Hour to the deadline and owner is pissed because half the stuff isn’t set up. He freaks out and starts yelling. “I’m not taking the financial hit on this, you are.” And he stammered off.

    So I left. Didn’t announce it, just left. Walked down to Ocean drive found my car and left. Enjoyed my new years with friends instead of working.

  18. I used a big word they didn’t understand. Instead of looking it up they asked what it meant so I sent a copy pasted definition. They were one level higher than me in a different dept and made a big stink to my boss. I honestly thought it was a joke

  19. Only been fired once, very early 20s. I constantly clocked in 5 minutes late for my shift. I was warned repeatedly, verbally and written, multiple times over the course of months until I was finally given the ultimatum: next time you’re late, you’re fired. So of course, I rolled in late again and got the ax.

  20. I was the manager of technical type lab and the clueless area manager and his two toadies came to check on my operation. During the visit one of the toadies referred to a unit of measurement as a twelfth when it actually was an eighth(.125). I pointed this out to him and lo and behold three weeks later I was let go for insubordination. Fuck’em

  21. I wasn’t the one fired, but I watched my peer get taken out in handcuffs by the police.

    I worked at Best Buy, and my coworker, we’ll call her Rachelle, was accused of accidentally returning a $10,000 TV to a gift card, but then during inventory the TV couldn’t be accounted for. She SWORE she would never do this. Our general manager told her she probably just doesn’t remember it. But the other managers begged and pleaded for the GM to look at the video tapes – because Rachelle wasn’t even working the day this return was made.

    The video tapes showed our other peer, we will call him Mike, doing the return. (Just transactionally – there was no product actually being returned.) Then we traced the gift card usage back to two different BBYs in the area.

    Sure enough, there was Mike in the surveillance footage, using the gift card to buy computers.

    When I got to work I was asked if I could close the store that night because Mike would be leaving us. Then I saw him come out in handcuffs.

    The police ended up finding over $15,000 of stolen merchandise tucked into a closet in his home. He’d done this several times, but only when he became “too” greedy did it bite him in the ass.

    He then became a Radio Shack manager before his court date + felony were official.

  22. I said I didn’t want to work the cash register. Already being split into two different departments doing too much. Whatever, they fired more people before and after me. Now they employ people who make a lot less than before the quality of the place has taken a dive. Hell I don’t know how they’re still open. They have the same supplier as Ralphs but sell at Whole Foods prices. I’ll never work with food again.

  23. Quitting. Literally a “you know what, you’re not quitting. You’re fired. I don’t need you anyway.”

    Ok, bud. As long as I don’t have to see your face anymore.

  24. For doing my job — and expecting others to do theirs.

    I was in charge of a project to replace about 20-25 computers in the production department. This represented a pretty big jump in hardware and a change in OS so there were a lot of questions that needed answering. I met with the head of the design department twice in order to keep him informed and get his input, but he was clearly not interested. Instead, he decided to hand this duty off to one of the staff photographers. Yes. A photog was going to run point on multiple decisions that would affect the entire department. I’ll call him Scott.

    The department had a ton of Adobe plugins that we had been spending tens of thousands of dollars annually on, so one of the questions was whether or not they were still needed. Scott immediately said yes. So I asked Scott to give me a list of projects released in the past two years that required these plugins. He couldn’t, so he backtracked and said none of them were needed. I *knew* this was wrong so I asked him to put that in writing, which he did. I forwarded this to the head of the department with a query and was told that if Scott said they weren’t needed then they weren’t needed.

    I bought one representative workstation of the type we would be moving towards. I set it up in a common area of the design department and asked Scott to work out a schedule where each employee would have time on the system to work on live projects, just to make sure nothing was missing. I gave them two months for this. At the end of two months I was told that the system was fine as is and we could proceed with the purchase. I got confirmation of this from the department head.

    When I took the representative machine down I noticed that it had less than 15 hours of use on the clock. I made sure my boss knew this.

    I drafted the order for the new hardware and software, something like $400k. This, along with the report and all of the CYA emails, was sent to my boss for approval. He raised an eyebrow but saw the emails and approved it. From there it went to the CFO who raised more than an eyebrow.

    At this point it gets hazy but the gist of it is the CFO went to the CEO and asked why a photog was put in charge of a $400k purchase. The CEO went to the design department head who promptly threw me under the bus, telling the CEO that I never explained things properly to him. He was also “unaware” that none of the plugins were being renewed which would lead to a rather critical work stoppage on several projects.

    The fact that I had the department head’s approval emails on everything didn’t matter. The department head and the CEO were buddies, so I was fired.

  25. Asking my boss if she could help because it was busy as fuck and she was doing nothing but scrolling on Facebook

  27. Joking with an injured student to distract them from their sideways foot while EMS hooked him up to morphine

    The RA on scene took real offense to it, went straight over my captain’s head to HR and demanded I be fired, claimed I was insulting the kid

  28. Wasn’t fired but pretty much. Worked as a technical recruiter for a short time. Easy work and felt it was a good fit. Husband and wife team seemed cool and it was great having a short commute and business hours. I thought it was strange when the guy who trained me was fired.

    About a month in I was close on hiring someone, and I went into the office on a Saturday, they gave me a key, to grab some resumes I was working on so I could call some folks on potential job openings. I called off the following Monday, and one of the owners called me telling me there had been a break in over the weekend. Asked what was taken, they said just resumes. I was like no computers or anything of value, they said no. Got around to asking them are you accusing me of stealing? After I was given a key no less. They didn’t outright say it. Asked if they got a police report, or look at cameras, and how if it was really a thief, why would they steal resumes. Of course they didn’t get a police report or look at cameras. Told them I’ll give the resumes I had, and allowed access to on the weekends, when pickup my final check. It totally explained why the previous guy was fired. The owners would keep you on, but once you were close to getting someone hired permanently at one of their clients, they’d fire the recruiter so they didn’t have to pay a commission.

    A few years later someone called me about my resume, he was the boss of his own firm. Wanted to asked about such and such. I was like “FUCK!” Turns out he experienced the exact same thing and it inspired him to start his own agency to focus on them and burying them.

    I went back into IT shortly after, and remembered a guy I interviewed that was right in an interview, and the owners didn’t feel he had enough personality. I remembered his last name and found a relative in a phone book that put him in touch with me. He was out of work, fiancé cancelled their wedding, and some other stuff, but dudes skills are top notch. He was just tense during an interview like many are. Got him hired at my new company and got myself a hiring bonus, plus he and his manager both thanked me for getting him the job. They loved him. Felt good to make some money in the end.

  29. I got laid off for being unique.

    I had been laid off from a previous professional job where I was using my production planning education and experience – stupid economy. I took a temp job in a warehouse of a national company doing simple production work and within a few days I was making improvements and increasing production. They very quickly hired me as their production planning manager – the only one in the company. After getting the five warehouses in our three state region running better, I was put into another unique position – Materials Planning Manager. Not long after I improved materials planning in our region and worked frequently with our corporate office, our company hired a new CEO to streamline the company. I was laid off because my position was unique.

  30. Target. Still in high school me put a shopping cart upside down on my supervisors car.

    Everyone, including my supervisor and his, thought it was hilarious except the AP manager. He called the cops, took photos, tried to have me arrested, my supervisor said no to pressing charges, so AP filed an internal report and I was let go a week later.

    AP manager was fired a month later for sexual harassment against the girl I was sleeping with. Saw him working as a bartender at an Applebees a couple years later.

  31. Worked at a mortgage company summer of my sophomore year in college as a Post Closing Clerk. I was in a room of other twenty-somethings just putting files together for processing at the bank.

    All I did was crack everyone up. Many times, with jokes about our morose, portly supervisor with a flatulence problem.

    Also, Howard Stern had just hit the airwaves, which I gleefully played in our little office. At the time, I had never heard radio like this (1987).

    By a certain point, nobody was getting any work done. I was doing back to back stand up comedy sets all day. The more people laughed, the more I entertained.

    The end came quickly one July morning. I was let go for under performance. Basically, I hadn’t completed a single task given me in two months. Moreover, I was ruining everyone else’s productivity.

    To this day, I contend to deserve being fired. Plus, I learned the lesson not to become the office clown. But I should have learned that in grade school. It would have been cheaper.

  32. Not at work, but I got fired from doing laundry at home. 🤣🤣🤣 After my girlfriend moved in with me she was so horrified at my caveman way of doing laundry (throw all clothes in washer / run washer / throw all clothes in dryer / run dryer / put clothes away) that she busted loose with pretty much an immediate “Would you mind if IIIIIIIIIII did all our laundry? 🙏” Since I detest laundry, I had no issues with this. 😃

    Found out she hates doing dishes. I don’t mind that at all, so that became my sole purview.

    Fair and equitable distribution of household tasks – domestic bliss achieved. 👍

  33. I got fired 15 years ago for ripping an obnoxious customer a new one over a period of several minutes – by phone.

    He deserved what he got, and I deserved what I got.

    I was going through a difficult period in my life at the time and just snapped.

    This was a large corporation, and they went under shortly after, and everyone got laid off, so ultimately no great loss. I changed careers after I got bounced.

  34. A more senior (and beloved) employee made a ton of data mistakes and dropped his project onto my lap when he took off for vacation. I had no background or access to information but I had to send it out to the client and it was my fault for not checking the numbers that I had no access to. I hated that company

  35. Refusing to work for free. The company had cash flow problems, told me I needed to work for free for a few days to keep my job. I said no and was fired.

  36. Comeback Kid was setting up to play a secret show in the basement of a bar next door to the pizza place I was working at. They were one of my favourite bands at the time, and the venue had a cap of 75 heads

    My manager and I were friends, and we had a long and rational conversation about the concert. I ended up walking out, and it was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen

  38. Making the mistake of putting in my 2 weeks notice to quit. Was immediately fired. Found out later , that was their “ policy “ because knowing someone was leaving , they didn’t trust that they wouldn’t get ripped off in the meantime. 🙄

  39. Not showing up because I got arrested. They told me I was unreliable but I would have been there if I wasn’t in jail.

    This was a restaurant and I was 18/19. Only time I’ve been fired though

  40. I got fired from my indie bookstore job *while on the register* because “your heart just isn’t in it.” I said “Well, [boss], $10 an hour of my heart is in it.”

    Later, as I was serving out my two weeks he told me to take my break early because he was training my replacement on the register during my break.

    My solace was that my replacement proved to be a horrible employee everyone hated.

  41. Calling someone a lazy bitch when she intentionally scheduled me to work a double shift during a holiday so she could call out that evening.

  42. Back when I used to work in finance, my manager left in our regional team of three dudes, because our CFO refused to give him a raise and bump in pay. It was nice for several months because it was just me and one other guy. We got to run things as we saw fit, and our regional satellite offices loved us for it. And then the CFO told us he interviewed 15 candidates for our new manager. Lies. It was 3. We confirmed it with the receptionist for all visitors for the CFO. The lady that was picked, she said she worked at Goldman Sachs and CitiBank, but when I looked her up, she had no LinkedIn profile and what came up was that she was recently a part time English teacher at a tiny “school”. Think like strip mall unit rented out kind of school, literally. I knew she was full of shit when she didn’t know basic Excel, as though she had never used it. This was explained by the fact that she did not know how to select multiple tabs, was unaware of any keyboard shortcuts, and didn’t even know a simple =VLOOKUP formula. She also didn’t know shit in meetings, and would claim she has never heard of a 13th accounting month to do reclasses, overlays, and other year end fixes. There was also no payment to the background check company to actually perform a background check on her, according to the head of accounting for the office. Basically, she lied her way into the job and she got paid more than the manager who left ($66,775 HKD/month vs $80,000 HKD/month). I confronted the CFO about this but he instead turned it back on me saying I am making this all up. He refused to acknowledge that he made a mistake hiring her. She ended up making all sorts of problems for everyone, such as creating extra work by insisting that items in decks be listed in reverse order just as a power flex over us. No one liked her and she became a dark hated cloud overhanging the entire region. The guy I worked with eventually took a paycut switching to another team rather than continue doing extra work working with her. My contract said I needed to give a 90 day notice period, which is insane, or else I need to pay back 90 days worth of salary if I leave immediately. The contract actually said if either party terminates employment, a payment in lieu of 90 days salary must be paid out. This meant if I got myself fired, it would be the company that has to pay me instead. So whereas before I would quietly talk to her about her shortcomings and ineptitude, instead I openly challenged her in front of everyone and answered her basic level knowledge questions out loud within earshot of the whole floor to maximize embarrassment. I also showed up to the office whenever I felt like it and worked from home as much as I wanted, even though she protested it. Mind you, I always did my work and my coworkers and satellite offices continued to love me. I just wanted out, and I wasn’t going to pay the 90 days worth of salary. Eventually on a Friday, I got called into a meeting with HR (I was warned by the accounting head and other HR girl ahead of time, again, because my coworkers actually liked me). She was there too. I sat down and she started talking. I cut her off immediately and looked at the HR lady only, “Does she need to be here for this?” “Oh, no.” “Heidie GET THE FUCK OUT!” It was the most satisfying day in the up until then approximately 10 years working in finance, and got paid out 90 days plus unused PTO, sick leave, etc.

  44. Trying to put my two week notice in. Manager thought I was joking because I asked her when she made a stupid joke with another manager. 2 weeks later I stopped showing up and she called me to let me know that I was fired after 3 no-call no-shows

  45. I used to work at a call centre that basically set up test drives for car dealerships. Apparently there was a monthly quota that was never explained to me and I didn’t meet it. I was let go for not meeting a quota I didn’t know existed. During Covid, all the dealerships terminated their contracts. They then used the money they would’ve paid out to the call centre to train their staff better. Last I heard the place was pretty well going under and the dealerships no longer need them.

  47. Only been fired once, was working as a Stainless Steel Tig welder and fabricator for about a year doing contract temp work, was told about a position in this factory fabricating bespoke lorries for agricultural use.

    Did two interviews with HR going over my past experience, showed them all my welding certificate’s and was offered the job.

    Turn up on the first day and get handed a Aluminium Mig welder and get told to get to work, I was like wtf I have no idea what I’m doing, I’m meant to be doing stainless steel work?

    Turns out 99% of the work the do is Aluminium, ask can someone show me how to do Aluminium welding but get told they ain’t got time so get to work welding up a nearly finished lorry trailer.

    Well, I tried and unsurprisingly I fucked it big time.

    Got fired the next day.

    But like seriously, how can you have a HR department responsible for finding welders and not tell them the difference between the different kind of welders, wasn’t like she was even new, got told she had been with the company for 10+ years.

  48. Coming in to work sick unknowingly sick with COVID for two and a half days.

    During the COVID pandemic our office had started calling some people back in to the office because they had the ability to. I was one of the people that called back in. I wore my mask, washed my hands religiously, always had hand sanitizer on me and kept my distance. Unfortunately I caught COVID and aside from just feeling a bit more tired than normal, did not really show any symptoms for the first ~3 or 4 days. In the middle of the 3rd day I started getting some hot flashes and was asked to leave to get tested. The results came back positive, I was put on paid leave for about a week and a half and then fired over the phone for breach of COVID policy on 3 separate days so it counted as 3 strikes.

  50. Not showing up. I worked at Walmart after high school and called in sick one too many times. I showed up the next night and tried to punch in but couldn’t. My manager didn’t even know I was fired.

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