It’s a fact of life that most people these days will experience getting fired, whether it’s because of something they did, because of the economy, or some other reason entirely.

These folks are sharing the reasons they were given, and I think at least a few of them fit into that odd third category.

This makes ME mad.

Earlier this year, I was hospitalized for a full work week for a miscarriage that had a lot of complications.

My direct boss (a woman) was completely empathetic and even though I’m a one-person team, she encouraged me to take off all the time that I wanted/needed. So, I did, and took an extra week off after being released from the hospital to just process some things and physically recover (I’d needed blood transfusions and multiple surgeries beyond just a D&C; also, couldn’t walk around much and had almost no energy for anything except sleep).

Anyway, about a month later, revenue reports came in for the previous month and there was a massive drop in revenue for my “team,”correlating directly with the period I was hospitalized and in recovery. While I was out, no one at work covered for me, so that work just didn’t get done and it led to a big $0 for most of the month.

My boss’ boss (a man) then sent an angry, accusatory email to me with my direct boss CC’d. They demanded to know why my “team” had done so poorly for the previous month and what I was going to do to step it up and make sure it never happened again, because whatever “mistake” I had made was completely unacceptable.

Corporate America at its absolute finest.

How can it be too late?

my manager kept losing my class schedule

worked at a subway. i had class two days a week. several times he put me on those days anyway. i gave him multiple copies every time. owner took me off the schedule for “calling out too much”

when i showed the owner proof he said it was too late and they already hired someone else

this was 12 years ago. im still mad

Definitely something that needs to change.

My Parole Officer wanted to make sure I actually had a job, so he went to my employer listed on my file to surprise visit me on the job. I did home wiring so I worked at different job sites and rarely in the office.

He called me to say he was going to charge me with a violation for lying to him about my whereabouts (this could’ve landed me back in prison for my remaining 10.5 years sentence). The owner of the company had to speak with him and vouche for me.

My Parole Office didn’t charge me, but the owner sure did fire me that day. Finding a job with a felony isn’t an easy thing, and it wasn’t long before my PO threatened to charge me with a violation if I didn’t find a job soon

A tandem firing.

I gave the fry guy and al**holic beverage from the bar in a kids cup.

He used to hook me up with coconut shrimp and fiesta rolls.

They fired both of us lol. I wonder how Jamaar is doing nowadays.

Disgusting.

I missed a lot of work because my wife got brain cancer.

They called me in for a meeting and said “Sorry, we are downsizing and letting a lot of people go”.

They didn’t fire anyone else, including a co-worker who was caught fabricating reports.

Bang bang.

A business I went to long ago was hiring and I got the job. Right after I signed all the paperwork, the department manager comes in and asks who I am. I tell him I was just hired as a temp.

Manger says he never authorized any hiring and fired both me and my boss on the spot. I did not work for this company at all and they fired me. 🙁

You did the right thing.

For reporting elder abuse.

Painfully awkward.

I was interviewing for a sales position and I made it all the way up the ladder through three different managers, to the advertising director. Had a great interview.

He told me I would be the future of this industry shook my hand, led me to the HR managers office, clapped me on the back and said to her, we’re hiring him. Start the paperwork and I’ll see you Monday.

She was pregnant tired and annoyed. She looked at me with disgust and said, “We eliminated that position yesterday. We’re not hiring anyone.” I asked if the director or managers knew that. She said they should.

What followed was an embarrassing two weeks of promises that they would make a spot for me and weak apologies from the hiring managers.

Ooof. Hired and fired within seconds.

That’s not how this works.

I refused to come in 15-20 mins early unpaid for my shift. I was always 5-10 min early but they decided they wanted me there earlier. I carried on as normal as I’m not coming in if I’m not being paid.

Turned up for a 12pm shift at 11:49, no one would look at me when I arrived then was thrown in a meeting and fired for being “late”. Was out the door before it even hit 12.

It was the only time I’ve ever been fired.

Very good advice.

I was denied a raise by HR after consistently working 60-70 hours weeks, and my VP (who had supported and requested the raise for me) told me to stop putting in the extra time, work my 40, and spend that extra time applying to new jobs.

Within a month, a meeting was called to “mutually part ways” because my work wasn’t getting done.

I was gratified to learn that they had to hire two people to do my job after I left.

Some people don’t appreciate art I guess.

I built a snow scorpion sculpture (I used ketchup for the red glowing eyes and everything) on a particularly miserable day at a ski resort.

The guests enjoyed my sculpture very much, management weren’t so happy.

This happens way too often.

I got fired once for putting in my 2 week notice.

The only other time I’ve gotten fired was working for a trade company, during the first week. I was a supervisor, and there was a second supervisor on site. I got a call that my wife had been rushed to the hospital, which was literally less than a mile away.

I asked the other supervisor if I could go to attend to her, and he said “sure, no problem, I’ve got things here. Go.”

I returned to the job site later to find the boss there, and he let me go on the spot for leaving the team “without a supervisor”. He knew what had happened, and still fired me.

I won’t lie, that one kind of pissed me off.

Honesty is not always the best policy.

His wife thought he was having an affair with the office manager.

He asked me if I thought it was possible that he was having an affair with the office manager.

I said, “It’s possible, but I don’t think you are. I could see why your wife might think so too.”

I was 21 and naïve as hell. Never should have said anything.

Make it make sense.

For doing my job too quickly and sitting down the rest of the time. Gas station cashier 3rd shift.

Me: “Why should I stand when I’m the only person in the store?”

Manager: “It’s more professional to stand than sit”

Me: “then why do you sit in your office?”

Sus.

I was a kid and just started at a local pizza place. I was let go couple weeks later because a pizza chef from Chicago had moved into the area and needed a job so it was a business decision that I totally understood.

Week later, went to go get my last check and asked how he was doing, the girl up front was like “pizza chef from Chicago? The only new hire was the managers new gf”.

Hilarious.

This isn’t why I got fired, but this is why I didn’t get a job…

I was 16 and looking to work at a Dairy Queen as my first job. My mom drove me to the interview and I was super nervous. She looked me in the eye and said “Just be honest, and be yourself, and you’ll do fine.”

I walked into that interview and when he asked me “How long do you think you’ll work here?” I responded “Until something better comes along”….

No way to win.

They sent me home because I sneezed and I was forced to get tested for Covid. Then when I tested negative, I was terminated for “Abusing pandemic policies to stay home”

I have no idea what happened, either.

I talked my way into a job at a software company when they put a hiring notice in a local paper. I had no idea what the software did. I still don’t.

They hired me as a trainer and no one ever explained what the product was. I did a few weeks where I was trained on the software but literally none of it ever made sense to me. It was like they were speaking gibberish.

One day I showed up, a lady I had never seen before gave me a check, and walked me out to the parking lot. No one even ever said “you’re fired” or anything.

It’s one of the strangest things that ever happened to me.

Replaced by a Roomba.

I was 19 and working as a janitor at a large self storage facility, where most days were filled with sweeping and mopping endless hallways of flickering fluorescent light. And when someone went delinquent on their bill (after a 3 month grace period), I would be instructed to empty their unit and dump everything in the trash outside. Once or twice it was a person who died, but otherwise it was a pretty common to see a room full of absolute junk that someone got tired of paying for. Banged-up furniture, garbage bags of ratty clothing, stacks of old magazines, it was usually pretty hoarder-friendly stuff, and not that I’d want any of it but the policy was I had to throw it into the dumpster outside no matter what it was.

One day I get notified to empty out a unit, so I grab the bin, cut the lock, fling open the gate. The room is full of huge cardboard boxes stacked to the ceiling. I open one up out of curiosity, and it’s full of brand new, unopened Gundam models. The entire room is full of them, dozens of boxes with dozens of models in each, and I’m talking the $50-$100 ones I saw for sale at my local comics shop every week. The manager would check up on me once or twice a day, and that morning he walked up and I showed him all of the brand new merchandise and said there has to be a better system than trashing all of this. He said rules are rules, something about insurance I didn’t understand, and told me to throw them all away.

So I went and I backed up one of the complementary U-Haul style box trucks, picked a few models out for myself, and loaded it up the truck with the rest of it. On my lunch break I drove over to the Children’s Resource Center that I’d volunteered at during high school, it’s a place where any child (but usually poorer ones) would go after school for arts and crafts and activities to keep them busy until their parents got home. The people at the drop-off dock were so grateful, before I even left they were handing them out to some extremely excited kids. Drove back to the self storage place with enough time to eat a sandwich and smoke a cigarette before clocking back in.

But that’s not why I got fired. I got fired because the manager came to check on me that afternoon, and after awhile of looking around, found me sitting cross legged on the floor of the janitor closet with model parts spread all around me, happily assembling a sweet translucent Zaku model. I was so entranced I didn’t even hear him come in, I just hear this long, drawn out, exasperated sigh. I look up and he just says “keys” and that was that. I spent the rest of the week assembling Zakus and Valkyries and lying to my parents about getting replaced with a Roomba.

Why are employers like this?

I went to the Emergency room instead of work.

Came back with an ER note and they said “We won’t be needing that. Can you come with us?”

I was 18 and it was my first full time job.

The easy way out.

I asked the CNA I was working with to stay with a confused patient, while I went and put a new IV in another patient. The CNA left the patient alone. She fell out of bed and got a big bloody skin tear on her arm. After I took care of that, I went and found the CNA and told her the patient was injured because of her insubordination.

The CNA cussed at me, and left the unit. I did not see her again that shift. She and another CNA decided on their own to trade assignments.

I wrote the CNA up. The CNA went to mgmt and lied about me. She said I called her by a racial slur and yelled at her. I did neither. Mgmt fired me rather than deal with a false claim of racism. I collected unemployment.

The CNA did something similar with another nurse a couple of weeks later, and was fired. My mgr asked if I could be rehired. HR said no.

When my mgr quit to start her own nursing agency a year later, she hired me.

The world is strange.

So are people. I guess we just have to accept that.