Nowadays, a very common sentiment amongst disgruntled employees is that everyone should “act their wage.” The idea is that if you’re unappreciated and underpaid, you should not be going above and beyond while on the clock. Do just enough of what’s required of you to keep the job, but don’t exert any more energy than is necessary.
Some people, however, take this mindset a little too far. Managers on Reddit have recently been sharing stories of employees that they had to fire for the most ridiculous reasons. From feeding the building’s rats to drinking on the job, these workers seemed like they were determined to get fired. Enjoy reading through these wild stories, and be sure to upvote the ones that leave your jaw on the floor!
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I worked with a woman who got fired for making tiny calzones for the rats, because she felt bad for starving them when we had to implement a super strict cleaning regimen and lock up all their food sources.
The manager robbed the restaurant on Christmas Eve night wearing a Grinch mask as a disguise.
Unfortunately for him, he had a distinctive tattoo on his hand that was visible on the security footage, and he was fired and arrested Christmas morning.
Worked at Jimmy John's for a while. This one dude put earwax in a customer's sandwich. Fortunately, the shift leader saw him do it so she could stop that sandwich from going out. He got fired immediately.
Got fired (by me) for s*xually harassing his manager DURING a s*xual harassment prevention training session.
Happened to a friend: Employee brought brownies to work on his birthday. There was w*ed in it. Everyone was sent home at like 10 am (high af, obvs).
Employee was fired on the spot.
There was a guy at my company who was a field supervisor. He let go of 2 of his guys go but didn't tell HR. Instead he changed their banking info for their direct deposit to a his own credentials. And he kept them active on payroll as field personnel while he collected their paychecks until he got caught.
Spilled booze all over their brand new laptop, came into my IT office drunk and handed us a fried out laptop, while still under the influence. He was a manager in another department, he was let go not long after.
Worst thing I have seen people do, but not get fired for, were older receptionist ladies bullying a fellow receptionist into committing s*****e, but that's a lot harder for HR to prove on who did what or when, since no official reports made, but it was kind of "known" in the office as happening.
Was part of s design team that remodeled/designed a Casino. it was close to opening so the Casino team was moving the contents of the existing Vault to the new Vault. They would do this in big wheeled carts with a few Casino management staff and armed security at all four corners. One of the tradesmen decided he'd pretend like he was robbing it as they moved it across the Casino.
Pulled his drill lout to make it look like a g*n. He was drawn down on by at least 2 of the security officers with sh*tg*ns. The GC field superintendent told him to leave immediately! This was a union job, so he called his union rep. once he arrived, the union rep watched the video and told him to get the f**k off the property. We still had lots to do before opening but that guy was not going to be part of it.
Well, we had a sales manager be drunk everyday. We kept smelling a smell of booze but thought maybe he was having a drink at lunch… nope. Walked in one day as he was putting away an open bottle of something in his desk, wiping his mouth and slurring his words.
He got the boot the next day.
Sent naked videos of herself eating cupcakes to a married coworker on teams !!! So easy not to do.
A guy at my work was fired after only 2 weeks.
During those 2 weeks he did a lot of things to annoy people, repeatedly resulting in him being called into our boss's office to be told "don't do that." It was annoying/stressing our boss to constantly have to tell this guy not to do very obvious things.
One day my boss calls him into his office for another chat. My boss isn't sure if he's going to fire him yet, but is going to see how the chat goes.
The guy starts off the conversation with "[Boss], you really need to relax." My boss said "You know, you're right. You're fired."
The dude had unknowingly recommended his own termination.
2 weeks later he came back to the office to try to convince our boss that our boss had made a mistake firing him. That did not go well.
Middle aged engineer took his shirt off in the middle of a meeting to impress (?) a junior female engineer.
I don't really know why he did it, but he managed to work god into it somehow.
I was an assistant manager for a lawn and garden department in college and we had to fire one of the seasonal girls because she would invite various love interests into the department on the 2-11 shift when no one was in the store after 8 and hook up in areas that didn't have cameras.
Me and my buddy caught her out behind the store with some guy with his pants down where we stored extra racking. She begged not to be fired but policy is policy. She was awful anyway so it was a relief to get rid of her.
We also had a cashier get fired for moving a nested waterfowl and was later arrested because she took the bird and nest to her house lol.
"Worst" was probably someone at a work party drinking too much, causing some issues when her manager tried to take her keys, and then attempted to drive away before crashing into a parked car in the parking lot.
Most egregious was that we used to have an "unlimited PTO" policy and a dude just left one day and never came back. It took about a month to fire him.
Hired a guy who we had interviewed virtually. Nice guy who had a great resume and credentials for the job. I was excited to have him join the team. He wound up being very productive, pleasant, and a great fit. I thought I knocked it out of the park with hiring him.
My company moved back to a hybrid schedule for local employees at the time and before I even got to the office, seven people messaged me complaining about his body odor. When I arrived, I nearly fainted. I didn’t know human beings could smell like that. Genuinely one of the foulest smells that I’ve experienced. I brought him into my office and asked if something was going on or if there was a medical situation or something I needed to be aware of. He just assured me he forgot to shower. I told him to go home and take care of it.
He came back two days later and somehow smelled worse. This continued to happen for three weeks and people were ready to riot. I had to temporarily move him to a back office because a pregnant employee got sick due to his body odor. I tried to get approval for him to work remotely but our company’s CEO wouldn’t approve it. After repeated warnings, I fired him.
The security guard who escorted him out asked our office manager for a mask with an exhalation valve before walking him out, while he was right there beside him. I managed to catch a glimpse of the guy and the look of humiliation, shame, and embarrassment was rough. Really cool guy who was decent at his job so I felt kind of bad, but my god. That s**t was nasty.
Growing software co in the late ‘90s.
Server guy was running a few p**n sites off the company’s servers.
I was the senior director of IT for a publicly traded bank.
I left to start my own company.
Got a call three months in asking me to come back to physically help identify servers that were in a secure area. Weird, but…ok. These are big machines, about the size of dishwashers.
Turns out the new guy in charge took two servers home to use as gaming computers.
At that time, in the late 1990s, each one of those computers cost $500,000.
They were backups filled with account data and every type of secure transaction log for bank, daily fed wires to checking account data, personal loans, you name it.
He didn’t even purge them, he just literally took them home in a truck, set them up in his living room and was using them online for his gaming.
When I got to the bank, I could not find the servers, and pulled the guy aside along with law enforcement where he confessed.
The treasury department, Secret Service and FBI went to his house and took the servers back.
I have never seen or heard from him again.
Where I used to work, 2 people got fired for having s*x in the warehouse. Lots of cameras in that warehouse so they couldn’t deny it.
I was the director of a county museum with a staff of 12. I had a security system installed that included cameras and recorded each time the exterior doors opened and closed.
The museum was open on weekends and a young woman was the regular receptionist those days. About two weeks after the system was installed, I decided to check and see if it was accurately working so I printed out some of its standards reports and checked the weekend videos. I was astounded to see the weekend receptionist get up and leave the building without locking it and setting the alarms. She returned in a few minutes with her boyfriend.
They unlocked and took some money from the donations box then left for lunch. Again, she did not lock up or set the alarms. The museum was open to the public and unattended. A few people did come in and wander around the exhibits and left. One kind person even left the admission fee on the receptionist desk. About two hours later the couple returned, nuzzling each other and went into the ladies bathroom together.
They emerged twenty or so minutes later arranging their clothes. Obviously, they had been in the ladies having s*x. The boyfriend left and the employee sat down at the receptionist desk and put her head down to nap for the next hour. Again, two people came in and she didn’t even wake.
When she came in the following Friday to get her check I told her she was fired. All of us really liked this employee, and thought she was a honest person. But she had no qualms about leaving the museum wide open for hours. You see, we had the coded alarm system before, but never the ability to know when the museum doors were open or locked.
She argued with me, until I showed her the video. She wasn’t aware the new system had been installed and there were now cameras in every room.
I knew a guy who got fired for planking at GameStop.
He got a Kotaku article about it.
Then a follow up article when he was denied unemployment. However you feel about the firing, I found it very funny that a government certified document has PLANKING listed as a reason to deny unemployment.
I knew a guy who stole iPhones from the warehouse we worked in, ran out on a meeting with management about it with the stolen phones in his pocket, jumped a barbed wire fence to escape, and then filed a grievance for "wrongful termination".
I was the manager of an employee and the supervisor of that employee.
The employee was having issues at home. His wife had developed mental issues and was struggling. The employee met with the supervisor to discuss the situation and ask for flexibility in scheduling as he navigated the issues and got help for his wife.
The supervisor agreed, and also offered to be an ear for the employee to talk about his issues with. The employee was grateful and over a few months opened up about some details of what the wife was going through.
After about 6 months, the supervisor used information obtained from employee to locate his wife while she was out shopping. Supervisor approached her, told her he was psychic and that upon seeing her, had been overcome with the weight of her mental load. The supervisor used all the privileged information to fake that he had a close emotion connection to the wife.
Supervisor f****d the wife for a couple months before he was caught. When it all came out we were...surprised.
We had a lady forcing herself to be invited to a supplier event in Italy. After being accepted and receiving an invitation, she forced the supplier to invite also an intern of the company.
So she goes to the event and they enjoy a day of conferences in a nice hotel, great lunch and even better dinner. The next day, they don’t show up for the continuation of the event and, once spotted by the supplier, she says they preferred to enjoy the day sightseeing.
Supplier calls me furious. I knew she was at the event as we paid for the airline tickets and booked her hotel. However, we don’t have interns.
Supplier says that he has proof that we have an intern.
Ok, show me the photo.
It’s her husband.
Embezzlement. Seen it happen at 3 different jobs across a decade. The first time it was my direct manager. She was led out of the office by security her boss and the VP of the entire company (big company, 5000+ people). She was kind of hated and it was really surreal. They had to threaten to call the cops there for her to finally leave, and I think the police were involved.
The worst one was the CEO of a small nonprofit. He was robbing Peter to pay Paul for years, and spending huge sums of money on “IT upgrades” (like moving the membership system to a different platform) to cover up the smaller but still large things he was doing. The company lost 3/4 of the staff and the office building iirc and still exists but is virtual only with a skeleton crew. Not sure why the people who stayed wanted to even stay at that point,.
I was the highest ranked person at a big back office building, I wasn’t in charge but kinda informally was.
There were REPEATED POOPS IN THE URINALS. We had some footage from a bad angle that only showed some of the entrance to the bathroom areas. Security and I went over endless hours of people entering and exiting and could not match anyone to the urinal pooping. We suspected this one dude but one day he left early before a p**p happened. So it got even weirder. At this point we are up to maybe 10 poops over 4 months. there are signs, warnings of discipline, people informing on others, mainly the Dude but I’d already ruled him out after some timing issues and his abscesses.
Eventually we figured out it was two older women working in tandem to P**P-FRAME this dude.
Turns out they didn’t like his politics and the two ladies formed this plan to get him fired without benefits. Instead we had to have these ladies put on peps before eventually laying them off at the first opportunity.
Had a guy doing a carving station in the back, only job he had was to cut primerib as it came in - well, apparently cutting his toenails was more important. He was relieved on the spot.
A couple who worked the sales floor left their baby in their car and it died. I remember the CEO flip-flopping between seething with rage and crying. Was a weird day. To this day I don’t trust Outbound Salespeople.
Led a team at the corporate office for an outdoors themed retail chain. The worker purchased a firearm from one of our outlets with the employee discount then gifted it to a friend immediately. It was discovered quickly because the recipient of said gift came back into the store the next day and requested service on the firearm.
In short, they were fired for an obvious straw purchase. Got in trouble with the ATF too.
Wasn't the manager, but I witnessed it. Worked on a local cruise ship, day cruises around the lake, that kinda thing. New guy on the crew, his third day working. Called in to tell the captain that he had hit some traffic and was goin to be 15 minutes late. Captain came to let us know. We told him we saw him asleep in his car in the company parking lot up the hill. 68 year old captain with two replaced knees marched right up the hill to fire him while he was in his car.
He started the week before Christmas and was a last minute addition to the Christmas “party”.
I say “party” because it simply involved everyone finishing early on the Thursday (because not everyone was in on the Friday), traipsing to the pub a few doors down, the CEO putting his card behind the bar and everyone getting f*****g annihilated. It was amazing.
The new guy went too heavy, too fast. He was ruined by 7pm and we could tell he was one of those that couldn’t handle his drink. That was the point he decided to walk up to the CEO and loudly declare, “you, mate, are a f*****g c**t”, and laugh loudly at himself. No one else laughed. You could’ve heard a pin drop. He walked in the next day and got escorted immediately back out.
For the record, the CEO is not a c**t. He’s legit one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. We’re friends on LinkedIn and I’ve had two jobs since then because of him recommending me to others. He’s a top guy.
I'm not a manager, but my last manager was fired because he was not paying employees overtime cuz corporate was on his a*s about having a lot of overtime. An employee immediately noticed he wasnt being paid extra for his double (16 hour) shifts. S****y manager was instantly fired once corporate found out how he did such an amazing job suddenly lowering overtime hours... so many managers dont deserve to be managers.
Audited a bank teller’s drawer. She had a handwritten IOU in drawer of all the money she ‘borrowed’ over a couple weeks period in correct denominations down to the nickel.
Another teller was stealing money from customers’ business accounts via cashier’s checks made out to cash. She was caught because she was the only teller to misspell ‘hundred’ as ‘hudrend’.
Both were fired and prosecuted.
Guy at my old office got walked out on his third day. He'd been telling everyone he was a 'cybersecurity expert' and on day two he plugged a random USB drive he found in the parking lot into his work computer to 'see what was on it.' It was a pentest drop our own security team had planted as a trap. He didn't even pass go.
A woman stuck her hand into an active bread maker and almost lost a finger just because she WANTED to be fired so she could collect unemployment.
Not super crazy but I was a regional supervisor for a construction security company and supervised about 120 guards we had in South Florida. I had an employee named Yansi who worked at one of our most important sites with Lennar, our biggest client. I was suspicious so three separate times I would show up unannounced to the construction site and he wouldn’t be there. He was clocking in and then going home. After the third time, I fired him and he begged me for his job and another opportunity but I said no. Fast forward a week, the guard we replaced him with was unable to man the site so against my better judgement, I called Yansi and told him we were willing to give him one last opportunity, I begged him not to make me look stupid for vouching for him. THAT VERY NIGHT not even 3 hours into his shift, he disappeared. Left the site, turned his phone off. Came back 3 hours later and tried to tell me he was there. Fired him, didn’t pay him for that day. He blew my phone up because he wanted the money he thought he deserved. Some people really don’t deserve second chances.
I wasn't his manager, but I had a guy try to r**e a coworker in her car in the parking lot on his first day at work. Iono who goes, 'Man I really need this jo--no, you know what? I need to do a r**e even more!' Fortunately someone saw them struggling within seconds and ran over to help, so his a*s went to jail.
I was a supervisor at a call center for one of the world's biggest brands. It took some effort to get a job here, we usually only hire those with experience and references.
Well we hired this guy and he got fired on his first day out of training. He went through 4 weeks of training and seemed normal enough. Day one at his cube doing his actual job? He took his pants off on the call floor. He said it was hot. It wasn't, we had a ridiculous air conditioner. Even if it was, you don't whip your balls out to your coworkers.
He genuinely didn't understand what he did wrong.
Got blackout drunk on kitchen wine, locked themselves in the bathroom, broke the toilet by falling into it and bled all over the place. We stopped the bleeding and paid for their cab home after making sure they were okay. Never heard from them again and they never returned for their things.
I bought a dog daycare a few years ago, about a year in, we caught one of the new employees... lets say having too much fun with one of the dogs, lost a lot of faith in humanity that morning jfc people...
I had an employee pull a g*n on me in the oil bay of Walmart. I had to scramble to make sure my other employees were safe. Lucky I talked him down.. but I needed new pants..
Got fired for shoplifting at the grocery store behind our business. The manager from the store asked for me, and showed me a CCTV image of him shoplifting on 3 occasions in full uniform (including name tag).
First guy I ever fired. If you're wondering it was a high end grocer, he was stealing CBD oil.
This girl who was clearly on d***s (couldn't sit still, odd speech, picking at her face) decided to cut her hair in the middle of the store and left the hair clippings on the floor.
He just ghosted us. He did not appear for his work appointments, did not respond to any work emails or text messages or phone calls. Did not ask for time off or sick leave. Nothing. Just disappeared. Left his personal items in his office, even a few opened snacks and half can of a coke on his table.
We finally heard back from him about two weeks later. He said that he had back pain. None of us believes him though. Unless he was in a coma or some traumatic accident, I just don't understand how during the entire two weeks he cannot even send us a text message. Our bosses are very lenient with giving time off too. It was bizarre.
I used to work the cash office in a big box store. One of the third shift guys who worked in electronics and was responsible for stocking and/or locking up the new games and game consoles was actually stealing them and either keeping them for himself or selling them. He also stole money out of the register - A LOT of money. They actually waited for him to steal enough to make it a felony, then fired him and had him led out in handcuffs.
Worked retail. A man got naked in the stock room that we never used... was on his phone having phone s*x with a woman, while m****rbating.... how do you even deal with that? I had to tell him to get dressed and go home he was fired.
Edit: thanks for the gift!
Caught a sub contractor smoking h****n in his van at the back of the shop.
Obviously fired him on the spot - absolutely insane behaviour.
When I was a shift leader at Popeyes, a fryer poured the entire oil from the filter thing down a floor drain in the middle of winter. Common sense was not common.
One of our new engineers, during probation, twisted another new engineer’s nipples in front of everyone.
Guy clocked in, walked straight to the break room, slept for three hours. Did it four days in a row before anyone noticed.
I wasn’t in their department but when I was a department manager at a grocery store the high school cashiers had a racket ringing up everything their friends bought as bananas
One day the cops showed up and arrested like 8 people (they scheduled them all at the same time to make it easy lol).
Got fired for diverting narcotics then got caught with another employee’s urine in her v****a during the d**g test.
The funniest ive ever seen was at my one job years ago I worked as an office admin for a janitorial company (oh i have stories) but one that really stands out is we had a contract for a recycling facility. The client came to us as it wasnt once, but like 5 times (dont know why they didnt tell us after the first time) where she was stealing cans from the recycling facility. She got her partner/husband or whoever to come pick up cans for her.. in HIS WORK TRUCK!!!! company logo and all exposed on camera. Then she proceeded to take those same cans and recycle them during the day for money back at the same facility..
I remember she came in to talk to HR and all I could hear her saying 'was that wrong? I thought they were garbage.." "The whole plant is recycling.. thats what they do, is recycle cans and you know that you are not to touch the cans... yes that was wrong and you know better' 'oh.. sorry, should i return the money back? as ive spent it already' Thats when I had to go out back as I was laughing in shock. People are wild.
craziest ive ever heard of was a cook at a casino in my city was caught dropping ladles of grease on a grease fire that went up the wall and burned down the kitchen, casino evacuated. She was charged with arson.
My mate told me a story about the chemical plant he worked in. Guy rode his push bike into the plant every day, of an evening pushed it out. One day said guy with bike had a problem as bike had fallen over. The guy was struggling to lift it a security guard went over to help. Both couldn't move it.
Turned out the guy was filling the frame with mercury.
For my team specifically, one employee made consistent personal purchases on the corporate card over the span of a month. I only caught it because of expense report reviews. I asked him why and he didn’t have much of an answer. Usually, it would happen because their personal cards resemble their corporate card, but I guess that wasn’t the case here.
Another employee committed timecard fraud. We’re in the office Monday through Friday, and our policies state that hourly employees must clock in at their desks or at an ADP kiosk once they’re on campus. This employee was clocking in from home, commuting about 50 minutes to the office, then clocking out after returning home.
I caught it because our timecard software captures IP addresses. I don’t micromanage timecard punches; I trust my employees to do the right thing. Because of that, it took me about four months to notice. The punches showed a T-Mobile IP address instead of our Spectrum Business network.
Before the termination meeting, I gave him an opportunity to come clean by asking whether I’d find additional instances if I looked back further. He said, “No.” I checked before the meeting and found that he had, in fact, done it multiple times, so he also lied about it. He was terminated on the spot.
Caught someone running their own etsy shop on company time using company equipment. Like full on packaging orders at their desk.
I worked with a guy who was fired (while in training) for stealing a huge tub of peanut butter from our restaurant. I think that was a like a 5 lb vat of it. The store delivery driver saw him take it out. After that we referred to him a peanut butter boy.
Lied about her brother dying to take a paid bereavement leave. Sent texts describing his wreck and condition in vivid detail. Created a fake obituary and sent to HR for proof. This employee always had an issue and I didn't trust her. Google helped me find the real obituary she used with a few details changed. She was fired and I was told not to do my own research anymore but instead let HR handle it.
Worked in one of those big buildings with reflective glass. New guy goes outside, sits down at a picnic table for lunch, pulls out a pipe and smokes a bowl. That picnic table was outside of the HR management offices and within the view of the door camera . The door camera also saved a still image every time someone badged in or out. So they had all of the HR management team witness it, plus several pictures. He of course tried to deny it.
First mgmt gig out of college was at a convenience store. Had an employee brace herself for a few minutes and then kneed the large metal safe behind the counter as hard as she could.
The worker's comp case lasted as long as took the judge to view the video and stop laughing.
I worked a grain mill with a bloke we'll call Scott a couple of years back. Scott started the same week as me. First, he tried to convince everybody that my general courtesy meant that I wanted to smash (I was the only woman on-site).
Then the tantrums started. I'll call one of our team leaders Craig. Scott had an issue with Craig that none of us could figure out, but he would go out of his way to pick fights with Craig constantly.
Then he was caught walking along the top of a shipping container outside of the fall cage. Then the morning crew discovered a two-inch-deep gouge in a steel I-beam, and reviewed the cams to see that he was Tokyo Drifting one of the forklifts the night before.
He was finally fired after we hired some after-schoolers. They would come to do simple tasks like sewing feed bags shut. The industrial sewing machine used to break down all the time. We all knew it was a bit c**p. But still, when it breaks down on these fifteen year old kids, Scott (father of seven) feels the need to absolutely verbally eviscerate the poor kids.
One of them refuses to come back to work, and the next day Scott's pulled into the owner's office. We worked out he'd been sacked when he did a burnout in the company carpark about twenty minutes later.
Scott should be at least 50 by now. I hope he's grown up.
A paint shop I was roughly associated with. It turned out the plant manager would tell smaller clients he could 'do their work on the side' for cheap if they weren't as picky about the colors (black is black, right?), but then would just throw their parts on the line without paying himself, taking customers from the shop and getting paid himself, with the shop doing all the work without even getting anything.
Also.... there was a second warehouse off-site that *somehow* he had installed a hottub at, and would drink beer there. In the warehouse. In a hottub.
I ran an industrial computer at a chicken plant, Two of the girls on the line were making extra money on lunch breaks turning tricks in their van.
We had an in house cafeteria. Someone thought blatantly stealing food from a place where everyone wears security badges was a good idea.
Was at a client's offices one day when several black SUVs pulled up. Guys in suits asking for the president. She came out and they asked to be taken to a specific worker's area. Went to his office and took him out in handcuffs along with his work computer. Turns out he was storing his illegal material on a company server. Most likely child SA material. Never heard what happened to him.
Chain restaurant. Dude has been there for two or so days. Still in training, not officially on the rotation yet. In that time he managed to get in an argument with the general manager about what his duties were. Later claimed he didn't know she was the GM, despite the fact that she wore a fancy golden nametag with "GENERAL MANAGER" printed on it
Comes in on day 3 smelling of alcohol. Helped himself to some of the food, out front without paying, right in front of the manager on duty. Asked one of the servers where the takeout plasticware was. Got angry at the server when she didn't know (because it wasn't part of her job, takeout was handled by the hosts).
Started yelling. Got into a fistfight with a second server who had stepped in to protect the first one. Got tackled to the floor by the ex-military manager. Eventually limped out, never to be seen again.
The cops were even called, but he was gone by then. Thankfully, it was a super quiet day.
My coworker was getting upset at the number of hours she was getting. Even though I put her down for her requested amount, she would call out at least 6 times per pay period, and when i brought it up to her (trying to see what we could do) she blew up on me and quit. A few days later she emailed me, called me a c**t and a walking red flag.
Now she's asking for her old job back 🙄.
I had a purchasing agent start a resupply business to sell the company product. While at work, they would find the item we needed, purchase it for their own company, and then sell it to us. After 6 months, someone in accounting thought it was strange that this new vendor had been paid $80k. They did some research and saw the employee name on the corporate documents as the owner.
The employee was offended that we suggested their was anything illegal in what they did.
