20 Dumb Ways To Get Fired On Day One, As Seen In These Entertaining Examples
Article created by: Ieva Pečiulytė
While some people gather plaques for being the employee of the month, others can’t make it through day one without being shown the door. Whether they’re late for work, impatient with clients, or simply unable to do their job, their career at the workplace often becomes shorter than the hiring process itself.
Examples of some of the shortest work experiences were discussed by members of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community. The employers and managers among them were asked to share stories of firing someone on their very first day, and they had plenty. Their stories cover everything from sleeping at work to scratching lottery tickets, stealing computers, and much more. Scroll down to find the surprising reasons people were fired on the list below.
I didn’t fire this guy personally but I did one better, I arrested him.
I’m a police officer in the UK, I was forced to help on a recruitment event in our headquarters where applicants turned up, listened to a talk and did a few exams. Almost all wore suits or shirts and ties, except one… One was wearing a black polo shirt, black combat trousers and tactical boots, wierd and a bad impression but whatever.
Whilst they do the exam I went into the yard for a smoke, all the applicants had to park in a certain area, which was just by the smoking shelter. One car stood out, it looked just like our unmarked cars, exactly like our unmarkeds. I was a little confused so I had a closer look at it. It had radiator lights and on the back seat was a police issue stab vest.
I thought that it must be one of our cars parked in the wrong place, it happens. After the exam they left, I watched them leave and lo and behold polo shirt man gets in the “unmarked car”. Immediately I jump in a real unmarked and take off after him. I found him 2 streets away *putting blue lights on* and driving through a red light. I overtook him, put my lights on and blocked him. He gets out waving a fake warrant card telling me he was en route to an emergency.
Arrested for impersonating a police officer. He was also suspected of doing the same in about 3 other forces.
I’m a teacher.
I was on a committee to hire a new 5th grade teacher.
I was showing her the ropes and monitoring her in class behavior. I watched this bonehead tell a student “I don’t like you very much. Figure it out yourself.”
The next thing I showed her was the door.
In the exit interview (had on the walk to the door) I demanded an explanation and she said of the student she ‘didn’t like’ she said “He was wearing designer jeans. You know his life is all peaches and cream, taking from us little guys.” I say “Did he make an inappropriate comment to you about money?” She says “No. But I know their kind.”
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Tl;dr: 30 year old woman was classist against a 10 year old.
He tried to buy weed off a customer just because the customer looked like someone who might have weed. He didn’t.
I worked at a drugstore.. They hired some girl and on her first day behind the counter alone she spent 20 minutes scratching unpurchased lotto tickets and throwing away any losers until the manager saw what she was doing on the security camera and booted her.
The job hours were from 8am to 4:30pm, Monday through Friday. Our new hire showed up about 10 minutes late on the first day. Normally 10 minutes late isn’t that big a deal to me, but it was his first day, and I had pulled 3 other staff members into our 8am meeting so we could discuss the training schedule with our new hire.
So we are already in our meeting when the new guy walks in. He doesn’t apologize for being late – he just sits down as I’m going over the training schedule for the week. After a few minutes of listening to us discuss what he’s going to be doing for the rest of this week, he raises his hand and says, “Can we reschedule the afternoon sessions planned for today and tomorrow? I have to leave at 11 today and 12:30 tomorrow.” This was the first time I was hearing about these plans.
I asked the 3 staff supervisors to give me an opportunity to speak with the new guy alone for a few minutes. They leave the room, so I start talking to the guy about how he can’t just change his schedule without running it by management first. As I’m talking to this guy, he gets a text. He looks down at his phone and puts his hand up, as if he were telling me, “I’ll be with you right after I finish reading this text”.
As soon as he finished reading the text and looked back at me, I said, “This isn’t going to work. Please make sure you take everything you brought with you and do not return. I’ll have HR email you your separation papers.” He seemed pretty shocked and asked what he did wrong so I told him. He tried to explain himself, but I told him that it’s best if he finds somewhere else to work.
I worked at a popular teen/college kid clothing store. I wasn’t the manager, but I trained new hires. This one girl shopped at the store a lot and we were excited to hire her.
She was let go because she was late, was caught trying on clothes instead of greeting, and apparently laughed when anyone asked for a size larger than a medium.
Her family showed up at the end of her shift, and tried to buy $2k-$3k worth of clothes with her employee discount. Corporate policy sucks, so they got a good portion of it. Her mom tried to bring it all back years later (completely worn/destroyed) and threw a fit saying she should get full price because the girl had died. Guess who we could all see sitting in her mom’s car?
Edit 1: added a word for clarity
Edit 2: Because a lot of you are asking, the store is American Eagle.
My old manager (matron at a psychiatric secure hospital) told me of a guy who was employed as a healthcare assistant, working with people with a learning disability. Part of his role involved escorting patients into the community to help them with shopping. He took his first charge to a shopping centre and proceeded to spend £250 on their debit card buying electronic goods for himself…which he then brought back to the hospital and asked for them to be stored in the staff room until the end of his shift. He left with the police.
Know someone who works at a warehouse that stores and ships boxes of pharmaceuticals. There are some understandably pretty tight handling rules so nothing goes missing and everything is stored properly.
One day they had a guy start that asked if they should open the oxy to count them to make sure that there was as many in the bottle as it said there was. He asked multiple people this, was gone shortly after.
IT position, supposedly had a BA in computer science with 2 years experience in relevant technical position. I didn’t interview him.
We very quickly discovered that his computer abilities were non existent, started asking questions until he broke down and said he lied on his resume because he wanted to make more money. His previous job was drywall installation.
We gave him a list of software he needed, available via a URL. He didn’t know what to do with a URL or what a URL was and then it quickly unravelled. It was about 3 hours because the first 2 were paperwork.
I work for a company that takes care of the HR needs of other small companies in my area. New hires often come in to fill out paperwork.
We had this guy who came in, filled out his name and social security number, gave it to us, then proceeded to steal the front desk guy’s wallet and keys. Right in front of the very visible security camera.
Turns out the police knew the guy as we was a repeat offender. He lived right around the corner.
A new hire posted to her Facebook page that she was starting a new job, but she was just doing it for the health insurance because she was trying to get pregnant, then she was going to quit. Basically, she was going to work there for 9 months, take paid maternity leave for a couple of months, get the medical expenses paid for, then leave.
Boss got wind of this on the first day and fired her.
That’s very tricky legal territory, but essentially she had lied in her interview saying that she wanted a long career with the company then admitted online that she was just scamming them for healthcare.
I managed a bookstore that had an auxiliary calendar kiosk at the other end of the shopping center. Hired a woman to man it, did her morning training, left her alone for a bit. Went back to check on her and found half the calendars stolen and her asleep behind the curtains we used to hide back stock. I’ve never been so angry.
Edit: Yes, I hired a woman to “man” something. How clever all of you are for making the exact same joke. Excellent work. >_>
New firefighter in my city. Had just finished 5 months academy, graduated the night before, his whole family is there, the mayor, half the city council, and the fire chief pins his badge and then he is assigned to a station. The rookie is told to report to the police department the next morning for tactical driver training (obstacle course and skid pad).
Dude shows up the next morning at the police department, an hour late, still drunk from all the celebrating from the night before. Not only fired, but arrested for DUI. That’s the end of his firefighting career.
He showed a relatively flat chested girl in the office the results of his wife’s breast augmentation on his phone and gave her the contact details of the plastic surgeon.
Not an employer or manager, but a girl at my job showed up absolutely plastered on her first day of work. Working at a machine shop, I’m sure you can imagine that this was especially a no-no.
I still wonder why anyone would show up drunk on their first day of work. Nerves maybe?
Did a Tarzan swing on a overhead hoist remote cable going some 20 feet before the cable tore out. It only took maintenance 20 minutes to fix, but he was gone by then.
Security supervisor at a hospital. At the end of my first day, the girl relieving me comes in 37 minutes late. She didn’t know I was going to be there so she took her time getting there. She promises up and down that the next day she would be there on time. The next day she is no call/no show. She was gainfully unemployed after that.
I’m not a manager, but I had a potential co-worker who called in sick. I guess he didn’t know that the manager didn’t have to work through the evening and bumped into him at the movies. My boss told us this as he fired him the next day.
