Was hired at a company as a designer. Went to the production meeting and sat down beside another designer (introduced myself and we started chatting). In comes everyone else and sits down. We all start chatting and do introductions.
Five minutes into the meeting the company owner comes in, chatting with a salesman. He glances around the room, then his face freezes on me - he then looks at the guy beside me and keeps looking back and forth. He finally motions for me to come outside the conference room. I walk out and he asks me what I was doing there. I tell him ‘remember, you hired me and my start day was today??’
He turned pale and just said ‘oh yeah I forgot’. He let me go back in the room but then I heard him call the guy beside me out.
The guy never came back. Apparently he had intended on firing him and forgot.
Needless to say I didn’t stay long before I found another job. The place was complete chaos.
Omg he had hired the replacement already and forgot to fire the guy… what a mess, and what an idiot
Yeah, I was young and it was my first job out of college (technically I worked thru college but this was my first after graduation) so I was very inexperienced still and also didn’t know what to look for when it came to red flags.
The owner’s wife worked there in a ‘higher up’ position and was the major cause of a lot of conflict at the company. Basically he would give people orders then she would come along and contradict them.
If anyone disagreed with her then she would go to hubby and complain about said person(s) making it impossible to please either because you couldn’t prove her wrong. That designer in particular was just the latest of ‘trophy wife’s wrath’. The place had an insane turnover rate I quickly found out.
At least it was a good learning experience and taught me to ask questions and meet people during the interview process.
My wife had a guy start at her company the same day she did, but he got fired that same day because for reasons no one understands he decided it would be wise to make his Teams (or whatever they used. Slack? I can’t remember) profile picture a meme that said “Epstein didn’t kill himself” or something to that effect.
It was a six figure software engineering job, too. I cannot imagine losing a job like that for such a silly, self-inflicted reason.
At my last job some intern burst into Slack calling everyone “mald” for disagreeing with his sexist memes. That whole event was just a couple of hours.
But did he kill himself?
I know you’re joking, but the department of justice finished their investigation and found a whole lot of ineptitude and negligence, but no conspiracy
Starting this off myself, there was one fella at my current job who bought vodka at a liquor store during his lunch break, poured heaps of it into his soda from a fast food joint, and wound up getting fired when they noticed him getting drunk as hell.
That was before I started working here, but coincidentally I met him at my other job!
Mine is similar. Arrived, day one in a new team; this one was more high-intensity than the usual - a fast-paced and very hands-on work environment. Noticed the team leader was working in a dysfunctional and unsafe manner; seemed unsteady. As the most junior member and a newbie at that I hesitated to confront directly; thankfully I managed to find a more experienced colleague. Scene was made safe; turned out the guy was drunk as a skunk. Canned within the hour.
I’ve since learned to be stronger and more willing to confront suboptimal or dangerous performance in team members, regardless of their seniority.
That was pretty scary.
An old restaurant I worked at hired a new chef. He came in, completely rearranged the kitchen, changed the menu top to bottom ON HIS FIRST DAY, and introduced a bunch of complicated specials. Dinner service hits, chaos ensues and dude disappears.
I was on expo watching everything fall apart when one of the line cooks is like, “get chef,I don’t know how to make this special because there’s no recipe or notes”
I go into the walk in and he’s haunched over in there and violently turns, around inhaling, all bug eyed. I told him we needed help. He doesn’t hide his annoyance goes on the line, makes the one dish in question and is like, “see, that wasn’t difficult” and disappeared again.
The line cook asked why I had the look on my face that I did and I said it was because chef was doing rails in the walk in. We both laughed, shook our heads and got through service eventually. Drugs are pretty common in the service industry but even that seemed extreme.
Anyhow we didn’t see him for the rest of the night. Next day, I get to work and the owner is there and he pulls me aside and told me what happened after. Owner didn’t even know he’d been snorting shit during the dinner rush
Chef continued his one man party and went into the booze closet and proceeded to help himself. When the prep cook showed up the next morning the kitchen door was wide open so she called the police thinking the place had been robbed. The police went in and found Chef semi conscious and incoherent, giggling in the office. He was fired and since he was a keyholder all the locks and alarm codes had to be changed
I’ve never seen someone self destruct that spectacularly.
To have been a fly on the wall when they called the other guy chef beat out for the gig and told him he could start immediately…
That’s amazing. How did he even get hired? You’d think there would at least have been one red flag.
I think the dude could actually cook. He’d been a chef at a resort in the Caribbean previous to that… makes sense: he cooked somewhere out of the country and I’m not sure if the owners reached out to that place.
He was a pushy prima Donna chef with ego and swagger. Dude was a skilled bullshitter who talked over people and I immediately didn’t like him but I’m sure he knew how to sell himself when he was interviewed.
The guy who replaced him was also a total dick (what is it with chefs?) But at least he could hold it together. Amusingly you could tell he didn’t want to be there: it was a Mexican place and he put meatloaf and a seared ahi tuna sandwich on the menu. His concession was adding cilantro, chilies or something to them. I left that place a few months later and he didn’t last much longer
It was one of the phlebotomists (person who draws blood) at the hospital I worked at.
It was her first day going off on her own. She accidentally went to the wrong floor/area that morning. She drew many patients’ blood that morning for the morning blood draws. The entire time she was there, she did not double check even a single patient’s name at any point. They were all wrong. All were mislabeled. All patients had to be re-drawn and she was fired for gross negligence.
Things happen and I’ve seen things get mislabeled many tines before. It’s not good obviously. But if you do it once and no one ended up getting hurt, you just get reprimanded and move on. You generally don’t get fired for a one off. But never before or after have I seen that level of mislabeling.
Not exactly on topic but in the spirit of this post have a funny story. Hired a young lady recently entering the work force. She had been working about a week when we did our payroll run. This entailed printing out all the checks with pay details etc. Is done in an administrative office that is obviously kind of private. Not some place you would wake in without permission. Anyhow we started the payroll print and my manager stepped out briefly to get a coffee. When she came back this new employee was flipping thru everyone’s pay check. Of course my manager immediately asks what she is doing to which she responds ‘oh I’m just wondering what everyone is being paid’.
She honestly thought it was just fine to not only start flipping thru paperwork in the managers office but to also look over employee payroll checks. She simply had no idea and just stated what she was doing like it was just fine. Actually that was her saving grace. While we made it quite clear how inappropriate it was, being it was her first job, we chalked that down to immaturity and didn’t let her go on the spot. Had she been older that likely would have been her last day.
Mind you she only last a week longer for a myriad of other reasons. Little common sense.
it was just fine to not only start flipping thru paperwork in the managers office but to also look over employee payroll checks
Hey so believe it or not but she was right; people should have the right to know what their coworkers get paid. Stop pretending it’s supposed to be secret.
Workers should be allowed to discuss their pay if they choose. They shouldn’t be able to access peoples’ private financial information because they feel like it.
Back in 2007 I worked in an office that required basic MS Excel / Word competency. The office manager led her to her desk and instructed her to turn on her computer (nothing fancy, a basic workstation with a large round button).
She couldn’t figure out how to turn it on. The office manager sent her home and she never came back.
there was a joung guy like 4 years ago in the job orientation (it area)
he could not turn it on either
He called the pointy finger of the teacher “magic finger”
he never got into the it apprenticeships but likely he got into another job orientation
I worked at a pet shop for two glorious days not knowing that I was the backup in case the boss’ nephew was accepted into his preferred college program. He was not accepted so I got the boot to make room for him on the team.
The manager doubled my first/ only paycheque because she felt bad. I’m still bitter 17 years later
Ah nepotism.
Not sure where you live, but I find it pretty wild you can fire someone without notice with no egregious misconduct.
When I was in highschool me and a couple of my friends got hired as waiters. We were required to attend these training sessions before we could start. It was your typical fake upbeat corp BS and we were a bunch of edgy teens, so you can imagine how it went. About halfway through the first session they tell my buddy he can change his attitude or leave, so he left.
I have a couple from the a warehouse job I worked at when I was 16. That place was wild lmao
- Fired from unplugging security cameras to charge his phone
- 30yo man harassing a 17yo girl
- That man’s wife fighting the 17yo girl for “flirting” with her husband even though she wasn’t
- Got on top of some shelves and took a nap. These shelves are really tall and you need a lift to get on top of them
These weren’t on their first day, but I thought they are worth mentioning
- Racing during lunch in the parking lot
- 10+ person brawl in the parking lot over a guy stealing another guy’s girlfriend
- A guy left his keys in his car so another guy just broke the window. He said he thought it was funny and that he got the bit from a movie, tv, or comedian or something
- A couple people got caught taking lunch on top of the shelves in a corner because the lunchroom was too loud. They also had a bed up there made up bubble wrap and yoga mats
- Going full speed into a door with a forklift while the forks were fully lifted
- Doing BMX tricks off the truck dock. I think people were riding skateboards off it too but I can’t remember 100%
That’s all the entertaining ones I can think of right now lol
There was some TV show in the 2000s that was a workplace drama / comedy set in a warehouse (or like a Costco?) and I remember something about two characters making like a hide-out at the top of some shelves. Does anyone remember the name of that show?
This is a subplot in The Office.
The movie Employee of the Month had that
I used to be a kitchen trainer at McDs in high school, one of my trainees got fired on her first day without me because she couldn’t remember what the different types of meat were. This was not only after spending my last 4 hours with her running through it repeatedly, but even directly after someone told her what they were she wouldn’t be able to point any of them out. I felt kinda bad because she was otherwise really nice, but it really was impossible to get her to retain any information.
I work in it company that support small business. a customer of ours has an employee demographic of about 90% women they had hired a marketing guy and I was setting up his work laptop around noon after talking with him about 10 minutes and getting his desk set up I knew this guy wasn’t going to last long with him mansplaining how it was done back before Windows 95. The paperwork for his termination had already been started by 4:00 p.m.
That’s one hell of a long running sentence right there.
We hired a receptionist who didn’t know how to use a computer. Couldn’t type or even use a mouse. This was at a small tech company maybe 20 years ago and she was 20 something at the time. She interviewed normally and I guess someone else wrote her resume. I don’t know if she thought she would just figure it out on the job? We did skills and typing tests after that.
On his first day, he came on to one of the women I worked with very aggressively and shortly after told another to “bring me a cup of tea, quickly” while on the way to a meeting.
He was escorted off the premises by several other members of staff a few hours into the day once all of his system access had been revoked.
I’m sad to say this, because I know what a bad rap this field gets already and I know so many lovely people who are part of it… But, they worked in InfoSec.
I got fired before my first day. Well kind of.
So I was in college at this time and I had applied for and got hired at McDonald’s. I had previous experience working at McDonald’s in a different town. Not sure exactly what position it was anymore but something something lead I think. Anywho at the end of the ‘your hired’ talk the manager that did the hiring told me that the Christmas party was like that weekend and I should really show up to meet everybody. So despite not working a single day I show up for the Christmas party.
Well, her boss (the boss of the person who hired me) saw me and determined my hair was too long for a guy and fired me. He basically said that boys were to have essentially a 1950s men’s haircuts if they were going to work for him… At McDonald’s. I don’t remember the specific words but I remember getting the vibe that he was very homophobic and that he thought long hair was somehow gay. So I was given the ultimatum of getting a proper men’s haircut or I could be done. And despite not being gay myself I didn’t want to work for some dude who just oozed homophobia, so I peaced out and told everyone I could at the manager of that McDonald’s was a homophobic piece of shit.
For those wondering how long was my hair… It just barely touched the collar of my shirt, if it even touched. You know the ‘broke college student who can’t afford or remember when the last haircut was’ look.
