In almost all cases, it takes time to build a good reputation or to earn the public or community’s trust.

Sadly, you can blow it all down with one mistake – which is exactly what these folks managed to do in the blink of an eye.

A little too spicy.

Local couple – husband was a city alderman/real estate agent and his father was a former mayor so their surname and family was very well known. Wife was a beloved teacher and cheer coach/sponsor at the high school.

Apparently she was trying to snap someone explicit pics on Snapchat and accidentally sent them to everyone on her snap including students, friends, family, fellow church members, etc.

She was fired and her husband divorced her because he wasn’t on Snapchat and wasn’t the intended recipient of her spicy pics.

Apparently he wasn’t very smart, though.

Dude I worked with had 30 years in our trade. Other people from other companies would call him for advice. He was a master of his craft. And he was Ned Flanders nice.

He was fired for downloading child porn on his work computer. A lot of it. Over period of a few months.

Even after he was fired most people assumed he had been caught using company materials to help do service work at his church or maybe, at worst, smoking weed.

He still had a decade before he could retire and I don’t think he has worked in that decade.

On a bender.

My former boss in politics who was hugely respected within his party, and a secretly recovering alcoholic, got so angry about the opposite party winning the election that he fell off the wagon. And then drunkenly sent an email to what would be his new boss calling him “a Mormon sister f**ker”

He was fired. And went on a bender for sometime after that. Ended up having to leave the area and move to the East coast in order to get work.

Imagine working PR at that college.

The director of financial aid at the college I worked at posted an ad on Craigslist offering scholarship for sex. When he arrived at the apartment it was the police who were waiting.

His wife worked at that college, too. She was pregnant and they had other small children.

Different story, same college, a professor rented a room out to a former student and he got busted putting a camera in the dudes shower. Two counts against him because the guy took a shower with his girlfriend.

The nail in the coffin.

Prince Andrew did a good job of keeping a relatively low public profile for years after his divorce.

The “work” he was assigned to didn’t require much TV work.

Then, after the Epstein accusations, that interview must have been the most excruciating thing I have ever watched.

I imagine he walked away thinking he had done a good job, and yet for everyone that watched it, it was the nail in his coffin.

Absolutely insane.

There’s a professor of Chemical Engineering at my uni. He’s internationally acclaimed, has a very successful lab, has earned countless awards in his field and as a professor, and he wrote a textbook used by many different universities for their ChemEng programs.

A few weeks ago he was caught f**king his dog outside the restroom of a state park near the university. I have no f**king idea why.

He told police “he just does it to let off steam”. He’s been fired from the uni, his lab disbanded, and basically his whole career thrown away.

Right into the ground.

My Mom ran a daycare for almost 20+ years. It was her own business that she build up. Not only did I attend it, it was my first real job. And I fell in love with childcare because of it.

We were very accommodating, we weren’t too strict. Our goal wasn’t to get a 3 year old to read at a 4th grade level. But to give parents what they needed, making sure the kids were safe and well cared for. Helping out along the way with potty training and weaning and such. We had such a long wait list. But still found a way to get the children who really needed it care.

My mother sold it to a larger chain daycare when she retired. They made a bunch of changes, made a bunch of promises that kids will be reading, potty trained by 2-3, perfect little angels.

Every child is different. You know why every child was potty trained by 3? Because if they weren’t they were kicked out.

No comfort items at nap time. Because they were making little adults instead of babies.

It took about 6 months and they wait list was zero. They were offering incentives to sign your child up. They could bring on workers. I think it downsized, but eventually closed.

Hundreds of millions.

At my old company we produced consumer goods and licensed lots of high end pop culture brands. On a call with a team representing a very popular and iconic space movie franchise owned by the mouse, one of our senior partners was sitting through a call on rights or sales numbers or whatever with like 20 people….thought he was on mute and said something to the effect of “How much longer do we have to listen to this obese idiot jerk himself off talking about his Bs anyhow!?!”

The Call was abruptly ended. All follow ups ignored. Maybe a week or two later we got a letter terminating all current and developing licensing deals for cause citing contract violations and the company was effectively quietly banned from ever doing business with any brand under that massive mouse umbrella.

That dude lost them hundreds of millions in future business in about 15 seconds. When you first start you’re told never to suggest pitching anything owned by the mouse and then get told the story.

They company was the worst job and culture I’ve ever had. Amazed it stays in business.

Definitely not a good idea.

Director of a place I worked sent an employee a dick pic as a “long shot.” Employee was at a party where she promptly showed other people wondering, “wtf just happened.” He had access to her phone number, but she had never willingly given it out to the director for any social engagements. Obviously, he went through files and found it and thought it was a good idea.

The worst part was that it was a picture of someone else’s dick that he was claiming to be his.

Anyway, he came in after his weekend and, after a brief HR visit, walked out. Oh, his wife worked there too and had just had a baby. The workplace is like high school, so everyone knew what happened about 2 hours after he was walked out.

Marriage and career ended in the speed of sending a text. Small big industry, and the news got around fast about the whole ordeal. At the time, the place I worked at was in CA, and the place that happened was on the East Coast. It wasn’t even a former co-worker who told me the story, but my new manager who had never even worked at my old place.

I then asked a mutual friend, my ex-husband, if the rumors were true. He confirmed as he was right next to the employee who received the text and unfortunately saw it with his own eyes.

Great advertising.

This reminds me of that guy who sold his old company truck to a used car dealer and ended up seeing it in the news with some terrorists in the middle east driving it. Mounted guns and everything on that thing with his business and his name painted on the side. Great advertising.

He was forced to close shop after because of the bad Rep.

Sad when you think about it since he didn’t deserve it. But great example.

No apology at all.

Me. I worked at the same company for ten years and had an excellent reputation. Some wild stuff went down and all the managers except for me had to be replaced. My reputation was fine at that point. Then we hired this crazy guy who was lying and saying strange things a lot, then he was sexually inappropriate with a customer. I reported all of this to my boss. This crazy guy made up even bigger and more compelling lies… about me. They believed him.

I didn’t do anything fireable, but they transferred me to a different location. I was told that I needed to “shape up to save my job” despite ten years of maximum raises and promotions and glowing feedback.

Two days later, the guy was fired by HR because a customer reported him for sexual harassment. Nobody said a word to me, no apology, nothing.

To state the obvious.

American Ninja Warrior winner Drew Drechsel. After years of training, competing, and coming up short, he finally won in season 11 and became just the third person to ever achieve “total victory” and win the $1 million dollar prize.

Months later, he was charged with child sex crimes. The court case is still ongoing, and he could face years in prison and massive fines. And to state the obvious, he will likely never compete again.

So super cringe.

Ellen DeGeneres.

She had a reputation for years of being kind and down to earth.

Until the accusations started coming out that she was a real dick to a lot of people and not kind like she portrayed.

Former.

Large government organisation I was working for had another related organisation added to its portfolio so as many people as possible from both organisations got together in the foyer of the building (3k people maybe) as the boss talked about the synergies of the 2 groups, makes sense etc etc.

There’s national news cameras and s**t, it’s a big deal politically here.

Camera pans to the crowd and catches a guy on one of the walkways on the 3rd floor making the machine gun fingers and pretending to shoot thousands of government workers below..

Call him former middle management..

The most evil scumbag.

There was a certain pastor in my town who was secretly the most evil scumbag imaginable. He was in rehab for his severe alcoholism and pretty much the moment he got out he wanted revenge.

His wife had left him and moved away, so he drove to Maine to get his revenge. His ex and their son were not home, but his daughter had been visiting them at the time.

He murd**ed her and then shot himself. His daughter was someone I knew from school so it still haunts me thinking about what happened to her.

It also turns out that this dude’s first wife “fell off a cliff” when she was pregnant with his child. Pretty sure he killed her too.

Just down the street???

My father.

Grew up believing he was an honest, hardworking, and loyal man.

While he was absolutely a hard working man, finding out when I was 21 that he had another house, woman and child 20 minutes down the street that he went to on his frequent “business trips” dispelled the notion that he was honest and loyal.

I mean, you’ve gotta be careful.

It’s almost impossible to get those things back, after all.