Weird ways to get fired at work

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Barrett50

Pre-takeoff checklist
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Barrett50
I was on Reddit a while back and there were some pretty good stories. I got fired from a job a long time ago and it was kinda interesting. I'll try to condense;

We were a team of about 10 engineers. Two of us had advanced degrees and were sort of the leads. We got a new boss with a PhD, and he was brought in to increase revenue, and reduce costs. He first knocked down the two 'lead' guys to just everyone being equal. Well, OK, so I stopped backing up some of the others with less experience. This put me and the new boss at odds. Next, he was pretty proud of his Mazda RX-7. One day I see him parking his car, and it was nice out and I was in my older Ferrari, and parked at the end of the lot, a few places away from his car. He didn't like that one bit.

We had a really nice eng on staff named John, and he tended to stutter when under a bit of stress. During a weekly meeting, the new Dr boss was getting on everyone for spending too much time, or not setting up billing for some jobs that could be billed, but may be contract support. John was always in the middle of the pack for billed hours but this month he was near the bottom. So, the new Dr boss was getting on his case, and John was starting to stutter in reply. The rest of the guys never bugged John about his stutter and he was always easy-going about it, and no one made any fuss. He was a good engineer otherwise.

So, Dr Boss is reaming out John, and John is stuttering in reply, and now Dr Boss fake stutters back: "Wh-wh-wh-what were you th-th-th-thinking here?" I turned to him and said 'that is enough of that'. He knew exactly what I meant. So he turns away from John and starts in on me. My billable was second out of 10, and my reports were always on time. So we get into a shouting match, and people are coming in from the hall and I'm face to face with Dr Boss and he tells me to get my personal stuff and head for the exit. Well, ok then. They process me out, and I went down the street and got a job with about 15% higher salary. The story got around in the tightly connected industry and Dr Boss was let go a few months later. No one ever saw him in the field again. John thanked me when we crossed paths after that, and we went to the bowling alley after work and had a few beers.
 
"I want to be the last one fired"

My boss, Albert, was a Russian SOB and principal in our engineering firm.

Chris and I were his "number 2" in our group. Chris had an engineering degree, but I had gotten there the long way.

We were equally running separate parts of the biggest engineering job in our company. Chris was smart, but also an a**kisser. He had come up with, admittedly, a great engineering solution for our large project. Albert never gave Chris credit for this, I think because he didn't understand it.

Yearly reviews come around and Albert asks me what my goals are for the new year. In all seriousness I say, "to be the last one fired." In the construction industry layoffs are common. The good engineers are typically the last ones fired. I thought my response was logical.

Albert got p***d. "Vat?? Vatt?? I can't put that down on this form!! What is wrong with you?", he yells. I tried to explain but he wasn't having it and we finally agreed on some BS goal.

Shortly thereafter the project gets final approval from the Office of the State Architect and Chris sees a way to get Albert on his side.

Chris approaches me with his idea. He wants to fake an award from a national organization and present it to Albert as if it were real. The award would be for Chris's idea noted above.

I thought he was joking, but he wasn't. "Chris, you leave me the hell out of this!", was my response.

Stupid Chris goes ahead with his plan. He even pays to have a fake plaque made up. Then he tells our marketing department about the award. He explains that he secretly applied to the national organization and they ended up giving Albert this special annual award for engineering.

We have multiple offices in multiple states, so marketing sets up a big production with video streaming the other offices, food, wine, the whole none yards (look that one of if you don't know where it comes from). They do a email blast to all our clients throughout the country announcing the award.

Chris proudly presents the award to Albert in front of everyone. Albert, however, is clueless. He didn't understand Chris' idea and he had no idea about this award. Nevertheless he stands there with his puffed out chest, as was his way.

Two days later...

Somehow, the national organization heard about this and checked their records. It took our CEO no time at all to find out what happened. Chris was escorted from the building the same day.

This was not the end of it however.

At the end of the month a board meeting was held. The principals voted to remove Albert from the company. He did get a nice send off and a significant ESOP buyout.

I ended up taking over the entire project and managing it until the end.

As it turned out, I achieved my goal for the year....

(Yeah, I couldn't make this up if I wanted. Fun fact, Albert ended up retiring to the same gated community as I did, many miles away from the office. I make a point to avoid the bas***d.)
 
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Sorta of fired once but actually not hired after graduation from engineering school.

Part of the program was a Co-Op job in a machine tool company that started me in the apprentice machinist program. After a few quarters in the apprentice shop, I was assigned to different departments in the main factory. Most of them had me actually running job lots on the machines in that department. Others like tool and die or gear hobbing I was basically told to watch 40 hours a week. Really enjoyed the real work.

Those watching positions got pretty old real fast so I took to bringing in class work for the next quarter and doing some advanced study.

When I graduated, I had an interview for a job with the machine tool company and was told that my “inattentive attitude” wasn’t satisfactory and no job for me. We parted ways and after interviewing several places, I signed on with USAF Systems Command which led to a very interesting and challenging career working on and eventually lead Jobs in the development and fielding of every USAF Tactical Fighter from the F-111 to the F-22/F-23 along with a few USN Fighters like the F-14 Tomcat.

The machine tool company was bought by a Japanese firm a few years after I was non-hired and upper management suffered some losses. No clue if the guy who non-hired me survived or not.
 
I seen one once’t!

Worked 12hr night shifts in the ER. Had a clerk that would go to a holding area that was always empty and dark in the wee hours to take a nap on her break.

One night one of the techs was already there taking a nap on one of the beds, when she hears some rather heavy breathing going on. So she waited to see who leave the curtained area first. It was our clerk, and she was alone.

Word got out quickly and the next day the tech was summoned and interrogated. She told us she couldn’t say anything further about it. But the unit clerk never worked another shift.
 
I was working my fifth day at Big Mama's Pizza on Greenwood Ave in Seattle on the solo 8 pm to 4 am shift (gotta get the after-the-bars-close drunks). I was prepping for the next day's morning shift because the 4-person previous shift never did their damn jobs. I chopped piles of olives, peppers, mushrooms, and such, and stashed them in the walk-in for the day shift. I was serving customers, deep cleaning the equipment and deep cleaning the dining area because the 4-person previous shift never did their damn jobs.

I'd never worked a night shift, and I was going home at dawn and barely sleeping. On night five about 1 am, the prep work was done, the stainless steel was wiped down, the floor was mopped, half the grill was cleaned (arduous), and I was sitting at a table in the dining room with a cup of coffee dreading the late night bar rush. I remember one corner table had a few people at it.

The boss walked in.

"I don't pay you to sit on your ass and relax!"
It went on from there.
"Look, all the prep's done because your last f--ing shift doesn't do its job! You could eat off this floor, everything is clean, I'm saving half the grill for drunks, and I'm taking a short break!"

It grew louder and louder, more and more animated and more and more expletives were tossed out.
Finally, he screams, "This is your last night! Don't come in tomorrow!"
I ripped off my apron, stuffed it in his chest, and said, "I quit! The store's all yours. Have fun cleaning the rest of the grill!" I stomped out and never went back for my check.
 
I ran a small business with 250 employees. One of them was my best friend. He got to work early one day and building was locked, but he saw one of the IT guys inside. He knocked on the window, yelling for the IT guy to let him in. The IT guy did the right thing and didn't open the door, saying he wasn't allowed to. When my friend finally got inside, he was livid. He went up to the IT guy and said, "Let's take this outside." I fired him on the spot, even though he tried to insist he just meant go outside and talk. No you didn't... you were threatening him.

This was a lower level tech job. He took the opportunity to go back to school full time and become a nurse. Now, he's an Nurse Practitioner and doing great in life. Turned out great for him!
 
In the early 90s, we had a young deputy sheriff who had just completed field training and was in his probationary phase, working solo. He was sharp and hard-working, but had a big ego and thought he was better than everyone else.

One evening he was dispatched to a fight. He responded with lights and siren (Code 3 in our lingo). Dispatch then advised that the caller reported that the fight had broken up and everyone ran off. The young deputy was several minutes further away than the other two responding to the call, so the sergeant directed him to “reduce” (turn off the red lights and siren, drive at normal speed, stop for red lights). Common practice, as Code 3 is high-risk for the officer and for the driving public and should be used judiciously.

Well, three minutes later he blasts through one of the busiest intersections in the county, lights and siren blazing. After the first unit had already arrived and confirmed no one was even there anymore.

The sergeant calls for him to meet with her and asks if he’d reduced when ordered. He says yes. He didn’t know that the sergeant and lieutenant had both watched him go through the intersection. When called out on his lie, he berates the sergeant and tells her that she does a lousy job running the shift. (She was highly regarded by all, even the grumpy old guys who hated everyone, and had proven herself a good street cop when was still in grade school.)

He was unemployed pretty much before making it out of the parking lot. Probationary employee - could be terminated at any time with or without cause.
 
I've only been fired from one job Well, prior to that when our company was spun out of another company, the old company sent us termination letters, but I was continuing in the same job, same office, same boss, etc, so I have that. We all hated the old company anyhow, so I framed the letter and had it hanging in my office for a while.

Nope, I got fired only because I was the highest-paid guy, and the "manager of the month" brought in figured he could get their junior bodies in for the price he was paying me. Every time we had a new manager rotated in, I sent my business plan for the unit's growth to them. One I even marched around an industry show introducing him to people that should be our partners and showing him what the competition was doing. I remember one of the last staff meetings where the manager said that we was largely flying blind and nobody had really given him an indication as to what should be happening. I stared him down. He finally added, "Except for Ron."

I'm sitting in a class at another conference and my phone rings. Emergency call from my boss (figured it had to be something really big with the major customer). He comes on the line with the HR person from a different division. I knew right then and there I was getting laid off and they'd already fired "my" HR person (she'd have been the one giving me the bad news anyhow). Don't come back to the office, we'll have all your stuff packed up and on the loading dock on Saturday. Great, I'm fretting that my business card file was in my desk and I'd need that going forward.

The good news is the girl from IT who was tasked with packing up my office gave me everything that didn't have "Property Of" written on it. Not only did I get my card file, but I got a computer monitor, a desk chair, and a ton of other stuff. I handed the security guy my badge, door card, and my Blackberry (why I had this foolish thing was another corporate stupidity story). Of course I get word a couple of days later from friends still in the company that they are upset that I didn't return the blackberry and were trying to figure out if they could remotely wipe the thing. Like if there was stuff on it that I shouldn't retain that I wouldn't have copied it off in the intervening week. I called corporate and told them I didn't like being slandered and that they got the blackberry with the badge lanyard wrapped around it when I picked up my effects.

Amusingly, this was ill-handled at their own detriment. I was only staying there working because I was waiting for Margy to hit retirement age at her job (she was federal and we'd retire with health insurance for the both of us). If they really wanted me out, they probably would have done an early buy out that would have been less than the severance they were obliged to give me. They had the audacity to be upset when I showed up at one of our business partners who I had done extensive B&P work looking for work. What did they expect me to do?

Anyhow, they rotated managers again in a few months and realized they needed my expertise. By this point I was working some side hustles (editing technical books) and consulting for a friend with a small software company (gave him the "friends and family discount). They called me back to do some projects for them for which they most certainly did NOT get the friends and family discount. I could have played it on for an extended period but my heart was no longer in it.

We did have to fire one guy (our security officer even) because we found he was serving up bit torrents on one of our machines.
 
One that should have been fired. My group hired a new person. 1 year probationary period, then have to determine whether to keep or let go. Two of use more experienced people went on trips with her and both of us told the boss to not retain this person. They did not get it and would be trouble.

Boss decided to be nice and retain them. I told him, "You are the boss, but I retain the right tell you I told you so." He replied, "Once only"

It was just a couple of months before he was ranting and raving about this person. I looked him in the eye and said, "I told you so." He grinned and reminded me that was my once.

Next time he was ranting and raving about this person, I looked at him and said, "You know what I would say, but I can't." He looked at me and busted out laughing. And said, yes, he knew. Every subsequent time, I would start to say that, and he would just say, "I KNOW, I KNOW. And you were right."
 
Twice I was on my way to fire someone and in one case, my boss had already done it (this was really bad) and in the other the guy quit right before I got there. Unfortunately, in the latter case the last thing the idiot did was to check in all the stuff he had been incompetently working on into the source database. I flushed all of his changes out and went on. A few years later I found a memory leak in code that hadn't changed since before we even had a source code control system. It never had a leak before. But, oops, there was one edit logged. The previously mentioned programmer and just deleted the free call in it. @*!@$*
 
Our department head would take his family and inlaws to a big sporting event every year, usually picking whichever team in the area was doing the best.

For whatever reason they had to cancel and he was left with a dozen tickets. Rather than selling them he decided to gift them to the employees, and he sent an email as a sort of game saying "I left them in the kitchen, first come first serve".
And at the time the rate for these was something like $500 a pop, so this was no small gift to the folks in the office.

The next day the deputy head, his right-hand man decided he was going to grab a couple for he and his wife who said she wanted to go. He shows up and all the tickets are gone. It's a small group but he figured he figured "you snooze you lose", and he was just late to claim his 2 tix.

But then word got around that it turns out one of the entry level kids fresh out of college who just joined a couple months ago and already established himself as a serial underperformer had grabbed all 12 tickets.

The kid, lacking any sense of self awareness, said the email was clear that it was first come first serve, and that he'd served himself all 12 tickets.

This chief of staff guy thought he must be joking, so he continued to push him for it. Realizing it wasn't a joke he was seriously annoyed and decided to raise the issue with the head.

The grievance was troubling enough to the department head that he came down and decided to make things right. When he politely told the kid that he'd have to give up some of the tickets for other team members, he couldn't.
He admitted he'd already told his GF he was taking her there, so he wasn't giving up those 2 tickets (OK)... and he'd already sold the other 10 tickets on ebay.

After that it was a grand total of maybe 3 weeks until HR found a reason to fire him "with cause". Incidentally, he never got a job in the industry again (at least in the 8 years since).
 
I wouldn't say a weird way but the fastest way is telling your divisional VP they are full of ________ in a very non-diplomatic way in front of the CEO when they were trying to kick your team under the bus for their short comings when they have saved his bacon on more than one occasion. I spent two hours listing to this guy spin every one of his screw-ups on someone else and when it came to my team, who I was very protective of, well someone had to speak up..

Didn't actually get fired on the spot, but the writing was on the wall in very big letters with the usual chicken _____t stuff like not returning calls, not approving special price request, "fine-toothing" expense reports looking for explanations to each and every entry, looking at customer interaction reports and criticizing the employee etc... I could see he was building a "just cause" case...

Got recruited away by a competitor and couple of months later and hired three of the five people working for me shortly there after... Oh.... we had a great time going after their business.

Two years later, that CEO recruited me to come work for her and I have been there since.... will be retiring next year after 25 years with the same company.. I had asked her one day about that incident and her thoughts of my demeanor..., and she noted that she appreciated my forthright evaluation of the situation even joked that I said what everyone was thinking but she inherited him and it is not easy to get rid of a VP. They eventually terminated him for employee harassment...
 
Not me but I was there:
We supported First I-state Bank data center. Go in with a woman new to the job, but says she has 6 years in 'IT technology'. I have to go on the mainframe floor to check on an IBM water-cooled massive computer, one of 3 in the building and check on a warning msg. I card us both in, she sees a clear plastic box on the wall with "EPO" red button next to the door frame. I'm walking toward the console, and before I can turn around she lifts the lexan cover and says "what does this do" while pushing the big red EPO. It got very quiet, very fast. Thank god, there was video of the entry. She was escorted out. We got an estimate that the downtime of all three mainframes cost about $4M. Next week, there was three separate EPO buttons, and there was a huge warning message all around on the wall.
 
This is off-topic, but I saw some discussion about someone asking how if you know you are going to be fired in a few days, what could you do to cause the most havoc in the company legally? Some of the suggestions were coming out to your boss, or telling your boss how happy you were that your wife is pregnant and about to give birth, because they would now be afraid to fire you due to possible discrimination lawsuits. I am not sure this would work, but it sure would stress out management and human resources
 
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