According to Zety's Leaving a Job: Termination to Resignation 2023 Report, nearly 6 in 10 (58%) of employees are afraid of being fired. In fact, 54 percent are so terrified of that thought that they admitted it scares them "more than death."
So Reddit user Balansky decided to invite people to fuel each other's nightmares and asked everyone on the platform to share the quickest ways they've seen workers getting the boot.
From terrible mistakes to entitled managers, here are some of the most memorable stories they've received.
#1
This is the opposite of what usually happens, but I thought it was pretty funny. My boss was away on business and I managed a tea shop near a Starbucks years ago. This kid came in (he was from abroad) and said he was supposed to start today. We were hiring and I trained him, etc. My boss came back two days later and had no idea. The kid was in the wrong place, but he stayed with us. He was hired on the spot without even applying.
Image credits: Difficult_Aide8679
#2
An intern on his first day, decided to open the door of a room where a few of the seniors were having an important meeting. He briefly lifted his leg up, farted and walked away laughing.
He got fired on the spot.
Image credits: EmployUpset8495
#3
I worked at McDonalds in high school. We had a kid take the cash drawer, jump the counter, and run on his first day. The dumbass had fully filled out all his paperwork and everything with his real name and address though.
Image credits: Grand_Raccoon0923
#4
3 days
New nurse didn't feel like being transferred to another area to work after 2 people called out. Started yelling at the nurse manager. However, the NMs regional manager was also visiting that day, so she went over to the shouting nurse and said, "your manager asked you to please go work in building 3 today. Please pack up your things and go to 3 for the day."
New nurse: "who the f**k are you?! Get out of my face!"
She was fired by the regional nurse manager and escorted out by security 20 minutes later.
Image credits: Johnnygunnz
#5
Before he even clocked in. Showing up drunk for your first day as a truck driver is frowned upon by management.
Image credits: tc6x6
#6
Onboarding with a colleague. Saw a female coworker. Said “Bet she needs to get railed reaaaal good.” Colleague: “That’s my twin sister. I’ll get you your papers, please go change.”
Took less than ten minutes from entering the facility to standing jobless in the parking lot.
#7
A 20 year guy got hired to work the seafood counter. See him twice and then never again. Asked a coworker what happened.
He had closed seafood one night and was walking out of the store and the 6 pounds of crab legs he'd stuffed down the back of his pants fell out in front of the closing manager.
Image credits: CutieWithCurves_
#8
Isolated mine in Western Australia where you need to fly in to get to work.
New start on their first day complains about tooth ache. Our on-site med team don't do dental so they offered to fly him back to Perth to see a dentist. He accepts and just goes radio silent. No response to calls, texts or emails. After a couple of weeks it's assumed that he has abandoned his employment and is formally terminated.
A few months later a supervisor gets an email from him apologising and explaining that he had to do some time in prison. And can he come back to work...
Image credits: TheNumberOneRat
#9
Started training a new waitress who got into a screaming match with a customer over how to pronounce quinoa. She lasted exactly 37 minutes. Manager just pointed to the door without saying a word.
Image credits: Elegant-Babe0
#10
I work in IT. At my last job this older (50-60ish) guy lied on his resume and in his interview an insane amount. He ended up getting the job he applied for in the finance department. We got his gear set up at his desk and I met him when he arrived on his first day. It was very apparent to us that he knew absolutely nothing about using computers. He couldn't open outlook, use Excel or any of the office suite at all, and seemed completely lost in front of his computer. His new manager soon came to this realization as well and he was let go before 12:00 on his first day.
Fastest turnaround I've ever seen in my whole career.
Image credits: MakeYouAGif
#11
Not my story but this happened to a friend. Orientation was all virtual due to COVID, and on the 1st day one of the girls forgot she was on mute when she decided to talk to her boyfriend about working with the "Jewbags".
Now, antisemitism is never a good thing. But it turns out that it's particularly inadvisable when you work at an investment banking firm in New York City. She was gone from the system by the 2nd day of orientation.
#12
Three weeks. Which you may be thinking isn't fast, but as a doctor is like lightning.
We had a new doctor in the emergency department who was hired during covid to fill some of the rota gaps and he seemed friendly enough. He got put on his first week of nights and didn't see a single patient, he just disappeared into the rest of the hospital. He was caught asking a first year resident how to read a hip x-ray (that was clearly fractured). He had to have all his patients re-evaluated because then his work was being brought under review. It was an absolute nightmare. Hiring standards during covid got pretty loose because we were stretched to f**k, but that sure was something. I've never seen a doctor show up and disappear that fast.
As an aside, a doctor hired alongside him was openly worse than the level of seniority he was hired at, was open about it, was dropped down to the appropriate level to train at, and everyone appreciated that the guy knew his limits. .
Image credits: MischievousMollusk
#13
New barman.
Started work at 11am
Helped himself to drinks behind the bar.
Called a regular a c**t.
Told people the food wasn't great.
Flirted with the manager's wife.
Caught ringing up half pints instead of pints and pocketing the difference.
Left at 12:30pm.
Image credits: SecretKaleEater
#14
Less than 2 hours. Worked in a kitchen. New guy came in for his first shift, gets asked to make food for the staff. Cutting up chicken to marinate, went to make the salad, didn't wash hands in-between. So... cross contamination. Turns out he didn't believe in bacteria. .
Image credits: IHaveLava
#15
We had a chef turn up for a trial week and was put on deserts. First night he drank a whole bottle of Malibu that was meant for the fruit cocktail and got sent home for being too pissed. Following morning he turned up early ready for work and had no memory of being sacked the night before.
Image credits: cow_1
#16
We had a morning “toolbox talk” to introduce the new guy… the boss made an announcement and introduced them and said what they would be doing and asked the new guy to say a few words… he gets up and the first words out of this guys mouth is “morning c#&ts”. The boss interjected and said, “you know what, don’t bother…” and told the guy to leave immediately… we all just sat there like stunned mullets.
Image credits: PegaxS
#17
Came in, decided she didn't like the color of the walls, fought with the boss about painting them because the current color didn't match her social media vibe, was fired after ten minutes, then tried to sue the boss because she wanted to quit before he fired her, apparently she couldn't think of a way to make herself the victim in the story for her social media.
Image credits: conohena
#18
I sat him down and welcomed him to the company. During the orientation myself and other employees emphasized that smoking and vaping are prohibited in the building. It’s a big deal and we have signs everywhere stating so. I gave examples of why it’s prohibited and sent them on a 15 minute break.
The boss walks into the bathroom into a cloud of vape smoke. When I asked him his response was. “I was in the bathroom, it’s a private area, you can’t tell me what I can do in a bathroom stall”. I walked him out of the building.
He lasted two hours and blew a decent salary for our area.
#19
Working in a warehouse, Hippie girl got hired sight unseen from a temp agency, showed up barefoot at the warehouse. Instant nope.
Image credits: Imightbeafanofthis
#20
Mail on Friday from the boss "Let's welcome Mary back on Monday from her maternity leave". Monday 8:10 AM - Mary, crying, saying goodbye to everybody - she was laid off by the same boss just as she came in the office.
Image credits: JJOne101
#21
Got caught using the trainers ID badge to access a printer to make copies of a prescription pad he stole from a doctor. He wanted to ‘hook people up’ at his new office. This happened on day three of training and everyone was already sketched out by his unhinged comments and behaviour leading up to this so it didn’t really surprise anyone.
Image credits: cheesesauceboss
#22
New driver/guard at an armored car company. Back from her first route, the person checking her in asked where a missing bag of money was. She was hiding it in her jacket. It was only $1200.
Image credits: demonassassin52
#23
I worked in a bar/casual restaurant and we had to let a dude go on his first shift. He decided it was a good idea to drink all the leftovers from the glasses that came back to the bar before washing them..
Image credits: Cashewkaas
#24
Watched our new receptionist get walked out after 2 hours because she wouldn't stop eating during client meetings. Not like a quiet snack full on crunchy chips and slurping smoothies while people were trying to talk. Her defense was I'm a foodie when HR stepped in.
Image credits: TeasingLadyv
#25
New coworker (f30 ish) sat next to me (m25) in the office. Started sending me teams messages of underwear randomly that she owned (links to shop websites).
Constant touches on, the leg, weird comments here and there, even after me asking her to stop.
Called it out to my manager, she was fired the next day, a week into her starting.
Glad they took it as seriously as they did.
#26
Worked at a rental car company in the winter. On his first day, the brand new detailer refused to clean snow off cars. He was fired within 15 minutes of showing up.
Image credits: ShoddyStatitician84
#27
Came to work recklessly swerving in the parking lot and almost hit three coworkers. When confronted he smirked and said “f**k em’”.
Image credits: Huseynov26
#28
She punched a customer—a customer that was holding a baby at the time of the punch, mind you—up by the registers in the Kohl’s department store where we were working.
Image credits: handsfreeordie
#29
I work in IT and we had a new employee starting on our customer service team. I met with all new employees to do their IT onboarding. So we are walking through getting signed into everything when one of my female colleagues came into my office to get a mouse. The new guy stands up and tells her he has a mouse for her, and motions to his crotch. I immediately sent my HR a message and they came with security and escorted him out. He was there maybe 25 minutes.
#30
He crashed the company car reversing it out of the garage and lied about it. It was a small dent, the incident was caught on camera. I asked him if he wanted to change his statement. He accused me of calling him a liar. It was his second day on the job.
Hardest part about that was his wife was friends with my then girlfriend and he started telling everyone that I had it out for him.
Don’t do favours for friends, I guess.
#31
8 of us were in orientation. We had a video to watch on sexual harassment. One recruit cracked a joke that it's pronounced "HER A*S-ment." Goodbye Chuck. We barely knew ya.
#32
Worked at a strip club and girl came in to audition and did great. Come back the next day for her first shift. She brought her boyfriend (nobody knew it was her bf) who tried to fight the first guy who put money in her thong during her first song before she even took anything off. She made it about 3 minutes into her first shift.
Image credits: dunkan799
#33
About 2 hours in a new hire for our window washing company straight up ran away ?. Young Asian guy (maybe about 20yr) seemed eager to work, but severely underestimated how physically demanding it is to be a window washer. That day we were a crew of six guys, doing a fairly nice home in Beverly hills with large windows and after about 90 minutes my little dude asked how much longer we'd be working, I let him know it would be about 5 more hours. Bro said he was going to the work van to get his Gatorade, alright... I look back over my shoulder and he's just took off in a full Sprint down the street and never came back lol.
At $20 an hour though I don't even blame him, truth be told that was some hard a*s work, but we did it because we were all being paid cash under the table and most of the people working for that company weren't legal anyway.
#34
My husband got a friend of his an interview where he was working. The friends interview went great and he got hired. He was excited and did a donut in their big gravel parking lot and they called him right after and told him that was unacceptable and don't bother coming in.
Image credits: TittiesNTurtles
#35
We eliminated the position of one of our longtime employees. She was a pain in the a*s, and filed HR complaints all the time for perfume smells and people walking around in sandals that make “flopping” sounds, radios too loud, etc….all petty b******t complaints. They really weren’t terminable offenses, but we just needed to get rid of her, and part of the deal was she got a 40-week severance package.
The terminated employee’s Manager was relatively new, so right after she was terminated, our VP told him to contact IT Security and get access to her emails, private directories, and Instant Messages (IMs).
Later that day, the Manager pulls me aside and tells me they just fired a long time female Privacy Administrator right after lunch. Apparently, when he got access to his terminated employee’s IMs, there were vile and disgusting exchanges between his ex-employee and the Privacy Administrator who were close friends. They had offensive and racist nicknames for him and other managers and VPs in the company, and all of it was there to see on a company asset.
Our VP was furious she didn’t think to pull those IMs before terminating the employee and giving her a $56,000 severance, because she could have been fired for cause and saved the company a lot of money.
Image credits: EevelBob
