What's the dumbest way you've seen someone get fired?

I was working in the IT admin office for a time while doing software development, and got to witness this guy who came in to have his laptop fixed/swapped; and he said "You guys don't like, check the laptops for files and stuff, right?".

And the IT guy was legendary, didn't skip a beat, was like "Nah, nah, we don't have time for that crap.".

As soon as the guy was out of the room, we checked his laptop's files.

Porn. So much porn. Like, gigs of it, and this was in the early 2000's when that meant a lot.

We went to HR, and they called him up and reviewed, and SOMEHOW, he dodged the bullet and they retained him. The reason? It was his porn. You read that right. He had gigs of porn of him banging his stripper GF on his laptop, and because it wasn't "downloaded" porn, he got off.

Then a month later he was let go when he was found taking pictures with his cell phone over the cubicle wall of a female employee without her knowledge.

But I'll never forget the mental gymnastics that happened to convince HR that porn only meant pictures of "other people" being naked, not himself and his GF.

Oh boy, I've seen a few:

• At a startup, one dude had obviously lied about his credentials. He was hired as a writer, but couldn't write shit. He spent the entire day hitting on women and bitching about how his ex wanted support for a child he wasn't convinced was his. He was fired about 3 days in...

• When I was a student, I worked at a sports store. One girl there was, let's say, packing in the chest compartment. She was also about 17, maybe 18. Most people were nice enough to not hit on her, but one day the security guard (who was maybe late thirties at the youngest) made a comment to me to say "I would absolutely destroy her back door, you know?" (but slightly more graphic). I told management, and she was brought in. She broke down, and went over all the off-hand comments he'd made to her. The manager immediately walked out, told him he was fired, and apologised to her.

• An old employer hired this guy who was a Microsoft MVP nominee. The guy was one of those types that could talk brilliantly, but couldn't take criticism. He listened to me, as I was senior, but ignored anything from managers or people at his level. To cut a long story short (I could write a book on this guy, and it would be hilarious) he lied about a project he worked on solo for six months. After checking in on his work we found he had bypassed our PR system and had been accepting all of his own requests, so no one has verified his code. It was an absolute mess. It cost the company a quarter of a million, for a project that should have brought in £50k. We later found out he was a nominee because he was so active on some Microsoft support forums, and mostly got that through posting "yeah I had the same problem" or from supplying easy or wrong answers. That loophole was closed shortly after...

I got fired for reading the newspaper during my lunch break. Once a week this newspaper came with a for hire section that also included career advice and al that stuff. I was reading that part but the CEO called me into his office to tell me off. I called his bluff and he fired me.

I was scheduled to lead a team in China for a few weeks and after that had to go to the US for some other job. Sadly people that are fired can't work off premises anymore so the staff manager begged me to accept their withdrawal of my discharge.

I kindly declined and got payed out a years' wage. Took the time to reorientate into less toxic work environment. I now work with politicians, don't know what happened there.

I once long ago worked in the incoming mail department for are insurance company. It was basically data entry.

Thing was, there wasn't enough work.

There were two teams of five, plus a supervisor for each team, and a manager above them.

So what would happen was, we would arrive in and go to our spots, a few minutes later the main would arrive. Most days there was 100 pieces of mail to process, a really busy day may have twice this amount.

Even the most complex items would take me 10 minutes to process. The bulk was around 3 minutes, given the above, could personally have processed all the mail on an average day, with 3hrs to spare for complications.

On an average day, I got in the order of 30-40 minutes of work.

On slow days, it was more like 20.

I started coming in late, sleeping at my desk. Wandering around, going up to the upper management offices and the roof.

I eventually got fired, after months of this behaviour. Not because I was underperforming, no! I got fired, because I was "effecting the moral of the team"

I can see the point of why I was fired. I was an arse, I wasn't suitable for the role.

Worked at IBM. Co-worker was in the datacenter, saw a bluescreened machine, and rebooted it. Much chaos ensued. Machine was part of a stability testing project, team running it was OTW to the DC to look at the machine, and were very confused when they arrived that it was running. "Helpful guy" was chastised, given a warning about touching machines that weren't his responsibility.

Two weeks later. Same guy. Same machine. Same bluescreen. Guess what he did? He rebooted it. Again.

Walked to the door that day.

I worked in a glasshouse for a while. Since everything is glass, and the temperature is pretty high, the new guy went to change his pants from long ones to short ones. The son of the boss, who just started recently, decided he did not like it and fired him on the spot.

I thought it was really stupid. Unfortunately there was no talking him out of it. The guy was hard to work with, and part of the reason I quit that job later.

I worked with a guy who's wife had just had a baby and the baby was sick. The guy was very good at his job but was working from home without really asking permission. We have some leeway in this matter but technically he didn't clear it. His supervisor really had it in for him and was trying very hard to get him fired for falsifying his time card. I don't know why he didn't like him, but the supervisor was a real ass. It may have been racist motivation, but I'm not sure.

I should point out that I had asked this guy to do some work for me that I didn't have the capability to do and this guy approached it in such a unique way that the customer and some universities were really interested in his work. This is a defense contractor environment where every working hour has to be accounted for. Whenever I asked the guy a question whether via email or telephone, he always responded immediately. It was all computer code so I didn't see a problem with this.

When he came into work and told me what was going on I immediately contact the manager on his behalf.

Well bottom line is that management pretty much dropped the subject and the supervisor was walked out of the facility. Turns out he had been falsifying his own time card the whole time. How's that for hypocrisy?

Justice served.

There's a linux command, called "touch" which sets the timestamp on a file. It's used for several things, including testing that the user has write privileges and that the filesystem is working.

I heard of a sysadmin who used to use "touch kids", creating or updating the file 'kids'. Some sort of internalised joke, I assume. His boss told him not to because it was inappropriate. Then again formally when he kept on doing it. Dude couldn't stop, like some form of muscle memory. Kept on using kids as a test filename.

So yeah, he got sacked pretty quickly.

Posting a selfie of himself holding a burger and a pop next to the "No food, no drinks, no photographs" sign in the secure datacenter?

Working at a call center and we had bonuses for people that could book the most hotel rooms (hotels.com). This one lady suddenly started winning all the bonuses day after day. This went on for almost 2 weeks. Then the FBI showed up. Turned out she was just stealing people's CC numbers and booking them hotel rooms without them knowing.

I got fired when the company decided to downsize.

"How is that dumb?" you ask? That happened less than two weeks after I was hired. The boss man's speech indicated that that was the result of a long deliberation by corporate. So if you knew there could be layoffs any moment, why the fuck were you hiring?

Harvey’s Hamburgers counted the times I punched in 1-3 minutes past my official start time (despite me being there 20 minutes in advance all times) as being “late” and fired me based off of this.

The two other employees were both pregnant with the manager so I have a suspicion that I got fired because at that time I couldn’t get pregnant. I still can’t get pregnant now because I’m a man, but I also couldn’t get pregnant back then.

This is technically fired, but it's more like quitting. It doesn't perfectly fit this thread but I love telling this story.

A few months into my first real job, the engineers got their raises (not me, I was new). 0%, after record profits, the team busting their ass and working insane hours, and promises of good raises. I think they got some gift cards or something.

One of my coworkers goes back to his desk, packs some stuff, walks to his car, and doesn't come back. He got paid for a full month before they finally fired him. We got a beer after and he was like "oh I don't think I'm gonna go back" in the most Office Space way

It was me, I left a bad review for the pizza place I was working for. Owner was pissed, but to be fair I waited 2 damn hours for my delivery and when it still never showed up I just cancelled the order. I wasn't even getting a deal on it.

We had one new guy getting fired for "refusing to talk to people who don't have a university degree".

At a place I worked at previously, there was a guy who got fired because the company found out that he had been hiding cans of beer in the water tank part of the toilet.

Yes...you read that right, he would "take a bathroom break" so he could pound a beer a few times throughout the day lol.

I wouldn't critique it that much honestly, except for the fact that he operated heavy equipment for his job, so yeah, not safe at all.

Not quite fired but close enough. I know a guy who had gotten his 100% disability from the military during his first enlistment (basically only worked for about 2 years and then medical said he was borked so he was going to collect a paycheck for the rest of his life)

Then he popped positive for smoking weed on a random drug test and lost it all. Now he's being discharged on an 'other than honorable' which means he loses all his benefits.

A whole team called in sick on the same day, went camping, posted pics to Facebook, shared the pics at work the next week in front of the boss.

I have a co-worker (in an open, shared office) who

• doesn’t react to tickets, Teams messages or emails
• refuses to answer the phone even when the call is specifically for him
• has only one specific task assigned to him, which he regularly fucks up but doesn’t care
• sleeps under his desk for an hour every day during work time
• plays music with offensive lyrics loudly, while others are on phone calls with customers
• watches porn on his work computer
• walks over to co-workers, farts, then walks back to his chair

He’s been with the company for 20 years.

One of my current co-workers. In his previous job, his company had him managing a warehouse by himself. Doing all the work, including the jobs that by the company handbook required two people and protective gear that they also didn't provide. When they were finished with that place they fired him for 'working unsafely'.

Not his responsibility, but still a dumb way to get rid of an excess employee.

Used to work at a warehouse driving lift trucks and forklifts. One guy out of nowhere turns into an aisle and smashes into a stack of 50" tvs. And this was back in the day when those things were like $2k each.

We go check on it and dude reeks of spiced rum. The stinkiest of liquors. He is shit faced. He had a bottle in his locker and kept going back for more. Fired on the spot.

Tbf that warehouse was wild, half the employees were ex cons and everyone was always doing stupid stuff

Some office administrative was going to be fired, but due to timezone confusion all her accounts were terminated before HR got to the office.

For half of the morning somebody had to pretend to be checking with IT why her computer didn't work.

There was a car wash service nearby where I lived, it was places at the end of supermarket parking lot. They got luxury Dodge Challenger car to polish its rims. An employee of that car wash decided to take a ride and crashed the car on a tree. He didn’t even have driving license.

Link in Polish, there are pictures, use translator for details: https://wroclaw.naszemiasto.pl/pracownik-myjni-rozbil-na-drzewie-luksusowe-auto-klienta/ar/c1-7527497

I worked in a call center for an internal support team. We had a group that started early in the morning since our headquarters was on the West Coast and calls would come in really early from the East Coast offices. Every Friday we would organize a group order for breakfast from a local diner and I usually was the one who would go and pick it up (long before DoorDash). One particular morning the order was missing a side of bacon for one of the team members. This person got so angry that they didn't have their bacon, they decided it would be a good idea to call the diner from the middle of our office while most agents were on the phone with end uses. They proceeded to yell at and lecture the poor diner worker who answered the phone saying things like "You forgot my damn bacon, I think you did it on purpose" and "What are you gonna do to fix this?" The call lasted a couple minutes as most of us were looking at one another in shock. Unsurprisingly, they did not return on Monday and we all couldn't believe someone was fired for missing bacon.

Someone secretly took a photo of someone else because they didn't like the shirt and sent it to so many people not realizing they all liked the person and immediately told them. He had HR involved within minutes and she was fired. All of that happened in about 20 minutes of the photo being taken. There is a strict policy on photos of other people at work that has its own training we all do annually.

For those wondering about the shirt

The last time I was a team lead, I would sit in on meetings and whenever this one admin assistant was present she would complain about an analyst's appearance saying things like he looked disheveled because his shirt had some wrinkles; but he was very much silicon-valley/california-shabby-chic fashioned for the time.

We got bought out by a bank complete with stereotypical old fashioned management and dinosaur sensibilities from the East Coast. She brought up the analyst again during one of our meetings that included the new management and the analyst was fired the next day.

Messaged in a work chat to "come and grab a laptop before they get asset tagged 😉" when we got a big donation of laptops

One of my regular customers is a factory that's been around 100+ years. My contact there was a maintenance man who retired and was difficult to replace. The young guy that replaced him gets caught jacking off on security cameras. They give him a stern warning and he gets caught jacking off again. Fired.

Work in a warehouse where boxes open all the time and fall out on the floor. This supervisor found a box of spilled pens and used one of them to write something down and they fired him for stealing 😂. I think they were looking for a reason cuz he was kind of uncontrollable.

There was an ice cream party for the company. Those who attended were laid off.

Restaurant Christmas party, guy walks out of the bathroom drunk af and tripping on shrooms with his dick out. Owner and their kid were right there when he came out. Instantly fired and lucky he’s not a sex offender

Probably me telling my manager to go fuck herself.

I think it was justified, but barely.

It was a fast food joint, so not exactly a job I was willing to take shit over.

I have long hair, and have since jr high. So did other employees, but only women and girls. A hair was found in food and it had to be mine, despite my hairnet, despite it being the wrong color, and not the same length.

I pointed all this out and she told me I needed to cut mine. I asked if this was a new policy for everyone, she said just me. So I told her to go fuck herself. Now, I'd have just said no politely, and let her fire me for something bullshit and collect unemployment. But back then, I had less self control.

After that, it was probably a dude I worked with at a nursing home. Weird dude, but a generally good partner to work with. Unfortunately, he liked stealing panties from patients. Why? Nobody knew. He said he didn't wear them, and it wasn't a sex thing. And that's all he would say on the subject.

Dude was lifting them after they got back from laundry services, stuffing them in his pocket. He had taken enough that it was noticeable, as in the rest of the staff was having trouble finding them for the patients to wear. You expect some loss of clothing via laundry, or wear and tear, but not just underwear, and not in bulk unless there was some kind of accident in laundry, like a bleach spill.

The laundry staff were questioned about it, and it was pretty obvious it wasn't them since they could have just said items were too damaged or stained, and nobody would have questioned it. They would have had records of tossing them, even if they were stealing them and faking it.

Dude got found out when he fucked up and pulled a pair out with his keys in the break room. You can't mistake a pair of big cotton panties for anything else, and the patient name was inked on.

With that, he was questioned by the head nurse, then the administrator, and gave no satisfactory answer. He did, however, return the pilfered panties when threatened with a call to the police. Not that it would have amounted to anything, but he didn't want the attention.

When I talked to him later on, he still wouldn't say why he did it. We had all kinds of silly theories cooked up, and I suspect that the one that he had some kind of mother or grandmother fixation was true, minus the bit about him being a budding Norman Bates taking them to dress up his mom's body.

Last I heard, he left the state, so I doubt I'll ever run into him to try and ask again.

A kid got fired for finding a pen on the ground. Person returned for the pen and then called corporate claiming the kid stole the pen

I fired someone for ignoring their work, falsifying the records, and instead driving around all day in the company van playing Pokémon Go. Yes, the van has GPS. Yes, they were aware of this fact.

I should add, they had worked there for nearly 30 years, and transferred to my team. The individual had probably been shirking their duty in this way for their entire career, but the Pokémon Go thing was going on for several years at least. Their previous manager didn't look into why someone with barely any customers was always so busy.

I think the German minister of finance has a place in these comments

Working in IT - Desktop support. One of my co workers picked up a ticket to go replace a keyboard in HR. HR was in a different building and it was mid winter and really cold out. He grabbed his coat and walked over there to replace the keyboard. Apparently he had a fat stanky bag of weed in his coat pocket. It was apparently very noticeable. A phone call was made before he even got back, and he was immediately let go.

This was before any kind of legalization existed in the area.

A salesman for the company forged sales orders. As soon as the company started billing the supposed customers he was discovered and asked to leave immediately. No severance (which you by law are entitled to), just leave, and we won't file charges. I have no idea what possessed him to do something so stupid....

So it doesn’t exactly fit but the first job I got after my training was, as I found out later, just a stand-in for someone else who had more experience but couldn’t join until about a month or two later. So I was supposed to be fired during probation once he joined. My coworker, who was already unhappy with his job, found out about it and quit right before the arrival of the other guy to make room for me (my hero!). So I took his place and my boss was stuck with me being there. A few months later my (new) coworker and me (and a few others) quit at around the same time because it became unbearable to work at this place.

Guy tried to enlist the boss's brother in law to falsify work. "We don't have to walk all the way up the mountainside to do the work, the client will never check it". Then he went home, leaving said brother in law to do all the work by himself.

A week after getting fired, he called the boss about the performance bonus that was promised at the start of the contract.

Early in my career, a co-worker was fired for (among other things), frequently sleeping at his desk when he was supposed to be working. The entire company was half a dozen people in a single room. I have no idea what he was thinking.

Someone at a no-paper, no-phones call centre I worked at had their buddy film them taking a call then they posted it to YouTube, both of them got fired when someone in management apparently saw it online.

I know someone who watched their coworker come into work absolutely hammered, sit at the front kiosk thing and yell at customers, piss their pants, and pass out. They didn't have a job anymore when they woke up.

A reply to a personal email from the direct boss but sending it to every other boss in the enterprise and including something in the line of "stop touching my balls!!!" ("deja de tocarme los cojones").

Stealing cases of beer and cartons of cigs every weekend for an entire summer even after the grocery store had started asking questions about who was stealing the beer and cigs.

Sadly it was like 10 ppl in total across a number of the stores in the city.

I worked at a assembly plant. One dude was throwing small screws at another coworker. He was fired for it.

Someone got hired as an IT Support Desk Technician. On his 5th day, he told the CEO that this job was temporary and he had no intentions of staying as he wanted to work in IT in a school.

5 minutes later he was fired.

OK, so we were having a Christmas luncheon at work. HR made the flyer. It said "Holiday" party. Somebody felt that was part of the war on Christmas, and crossed out Holiday and wrote Christmas. That wasn't the issue. Another guy took offense to that guy, and made a counterfeit flyer for the company Cthulu summoning. It said that the human sacrifice would be at 12, lunch at 1 so bring a change of clothes. He posted those all over.

That's a firing.

We were a small team canvassing for a nonprofit. So we would go out to markets and busy areas and talk to people all day trying to get donations.

Well one time we were out during election times and this guy from our team spent the majority of the day campaigning for a local candidate. That was his last day on the team.

Watched a guy with an iPad stuffed down the front of his pants walk out through a metal detector. The outline and part of the box were very visible.

I just remembered someone got fired from my first week of working at my job... But I literally can't remember what they looked like or their name. It's freaking me out

Anyways he got fired because he left our client in the waiting room of a hospital. (We work with the special needs and left with all his medical information)

Making a racist joke in from of those people lol

This feels like a bait question to get people to break the new "no politics" rule.

this mother fucker got fired on his day off! something about stealing boxes or some shit.