Weird ways to get fired at work

TCABM said:
And don’t forget that Florida and Texas both are subject to two different time zones within their state boundaries.
Click to expand...
Years back Alaska had 4 time zones. Imagine being in the western most time zone in Alaska and trying to figure out when to call someone in New York...

And why does Alaska do DST.??
 
TCABM said:
And don’t forget that Florida and Texas both are subject to two different time zones within their state boundaries.
Click to expand...
Idaho does as well. And it's a north/south division, so while northern Idaho is on Pacific time and southern Idaho is on Mountain time, they are both on essentially the same solar time.

I went skiing last week at Lookout Pass, which straddles the continental divide, and so also straddles the Idaho/Montana border. One run lets you alternate turns in Idaho/Montana/Idaho/Montana... And sure enough, the phone and smart watch kept switching time zones depending on where on the mountain I was.
 
GaryM said:
Idaho does as well. And it's a north/south division, so while northern Idaho is on Pacific time and southern Idaho is on Mountain time, they are both on essentially the same solar time.

I went skiing last week at Lookout Pass, which straddles the continental divide, and so also straddles the Idaho/Montana border. One run lets you alternate turns in Idaho/Montana/Idaho/Montana... And sure enough, the phone and smart watch kept switching time zones depending on where on the mountain I was.
Click to expand...

I’ll have to try that mountain.
 
Bob Noel said:
check out Cheers, S3.E21 The Executive's Executioner
Click to expand...
Nobody ever bought me a beer first. (Although, in retrospect, getting fired from a job that I knew I was doing well was a blessing in disguise. I went to a job where I worked for non-idiots, and they eventually went bankrupt.)
 
moparrob66 said:
Even if a pot smoker is stone sober while on the clock, for many employers its a trust issue. Everyone knows cannabis is illegal on a federal level, yet pot smokers go to great lengths to justify its recreational use. Until it is decriminalized, its still a crime that criminals intentionally, knowingly and repeatedly spend money time and effort to commit. If you demonstrate that you cant be trusted to follow that law, how far outside the circle of trust do your personal standards put you?
Click to expand...
Meh.

The state I live in regulates THC, but doesnt ban it. I don't use, and this is not an opinion as to whether or not THC is healthy, or SHOULD be legal, regulated, or banned.

It's a two-way trust issue, not black and white. The feds COULD ban THC, but they never have. What they did was backdoor a prohibition. (You need a tax stamp that they decline to provide.)

Under several state constitutions courts in those states would say the substance wasn't banned, in others like mine the courts say it isn't in violation of federal law because of the manner in which the feds regulate it.
 
Pinecone said:
That is not how it works.

The state can pass laws to make DST full time. Arizona and Hawaii are full time Standard Time. The tail of Indiana also is.

To get it changed at the Federal level is a while different process. And the Governor is not involved. It is up the Senator(s) or Congressmen to start the process.
Click to expand...

Under Federal law the states can not make DST full time by passing a law. They can decide to observe standard time full time. The Uniform Time Act states that only Congress or the Secretary of Transportation can authorize a state to observe a different time or change the dates that they change from DST to Standard Time and back. Florida has passed a law to observe DST year round but the federal government has not given them the authorization to do it.


Why are we changing our clocks if the law was approved by the Florida Legislature?

Even though the law was passed by all of the Florida lawmakers, it still needs to get congressional approval before it becomes law. Federal law prohibits a state from changing time zones without a statute passed by Congress or the secretary of transportation issuing regulations.

States are allowed to opt out of observing daylight saving time and remain on standard time without Congressional approval. Which is why states like Hawaii and Arizona do not change their time. They are actually staying on standard time.

Florida, like many other states, are trying to change their standard time and stay permanently on Daylight Savings time, which would change the time zone. And since it requires Congress to amend the Uniform Time Act to allow the change, we have to wait.
 
Living on the leading edge of a time zone, I would prefer to observe DST year-round because most of my free time is late in the day and I need light for almost everything that I do with that time. At the trailing edge, I might not care as much, but would still prefer it.

EDIT: It just occurred to me which thread this is. The drift could take one on a round-the-world tour. I'm so proud of us.
 
Last edited:
I do a few arbitrations that involve Puerto Rico (I'm in Charlotte, NC). Every year at the DST switchover, FINRA reminds us that the AST (which doesn't have DST) is shifting with respect to us. AST=EDT but is an ahead of EST.

Of course, this has little to do with whether we are in an office or not. Even when I worked in an office, I frequently had calls with people in different time zones... sometimes drastically different (like dealing with Australians).
 
Stevel said:
EDIT: It just occurred to me which thread this is. The drift could take one on a round-the-world tour. I'm so proud of us.
Click to expand...
We haven't been on-topic for a little while now. Squirrel!!
 
This didn't happen to me, but the story fits the bill.

My BIL was a supervisor in a parts warehouse for a major Japanese automobile manufacturer, and many of the people that worked there (or at least were there from time to time) were from the mother ship back in Japan. The manufacturer, as per their practice here in the US, hired on a "temp to hire" basis - you worked for a temp agency for 90 days, and if they were happy with the performance of the temp, you got hired after the 90 day period.

New temp shows up, wearing a t-shirt with a mushroom cloud on it with the words "Made in the USA, Tested in Japan" on it.

He was immediately shown the door.
 
Pre-2020, we were issued laptops and we would VPN to a virtual machine; company policy allowed personal use of the laptop for approved purposes, such as professional development or education.

Had a co-worker that was on a no-work layoff notice with a one year severance. During the notice period he was using the laptop to surf only fans.

Company found out on a random IT audit of the box; he was terminated for cause about two weeks before the layoff would have been effective.
 
Had a couple of state workers in a teacher's classroom in a school doing repairs. It was after the students had left but the teacher was in & out of the room during this time. When the teacher noticed their smart phone was missing the security folks were called and the cameras showed both men leaving the room but no way to know which one had the phone. Pinging the phone found it on the seat of one of the workers vehicles.

School officials even tried to let the worker off by asking them if it were possible that when picking up their tools the phone was inadvertently gathered up also. The way out was missed or the worker decided to tell the truth and they were sent packing shortly thereafter ...
 
TCABM said:
Pre-2020, we were issued laptops and we would VPN to a virtual machine; company policy allowed personal use of the laptop for approved purposes, such as professional development or education.

Had a co-worker that was on a no-work layoff notice with a one year severance. During the notice period he was using the laptop to surf only fans.

Company found out on a random IT audit of the box; he was terminated for cause about two weeks before the layoff would have been effective.
Click to expand...
I wonder how much a years severance works out to in cost per minute :rolleyes:
 
There was a guy at the last place I worked that got in-famous. He was one of the first people convicted* under the Economic Espionage Act of 1996. He was a regional sales VP at the time. My recollection was that his boss retired and we had an east and west VP that were in line for the promotion. This guy didn’t get the job. Mr. Disgruntled Employee made copies of some internal documents, including sales forecasts and some other proprietary info, then mailed that out to competitors. We found out about it when we got a a package in the mail from one of those companies, along with a letter that said something like, “We got this in the mail. We didn’t ask for it, we don’t want anything to do with it, and when we saw what it was we put it back in the envelope and returned it.” One of those companies was in England, which made it an international issue and elevated it considerably. One morning the FBI was waiting in the lobby. When the guy walked in the door the MIB walked him right back out. I saw the black SUVs in the visitor lot when I got to work, but I missed all the fun because I came in the back door.

We never saw that guy again.

Good times.

* edit - Maybe not “convicted”. I looked it up. He plea bargained to probation, restitution, and fines.
 
Last edited:
Remembered another way for a law enforcement officer to get fired. This one really happened, but if it was a TV show, it’d be dismissed as being too ridiculous.

It happened at my agency in the early 80s, several years before I started. A young deputy gets dispatched to a report of a suspicious vehicle in a remote area, arrives, radios that he’s being shot at, suspect vehicle flees, deputy’s car has multiple bullet holes. But something just doesn’t seem right.

After investigation - which our protagonist apparently failed to foresee would include CSI and questioning by detectives - it unravels. He called from a pay phone and reported the “suspicious vehicle” himself. It was before 911 had any ability to know where the call was coming from, other than asking the caller. He knew he’d be dispatched because it was in a remote part of his beat (which effectively covered a quarter of the county because it was an urban area with a rural extension; the rural area generated only one or two calls in a month), and due to the distance from everything else, it being just a report of an vehicle in an unusual spot, and the ethos of the time being one problem one deputy, it was a one-man call.

The solid clue that something was wrong was the bullet holes in his windshield. He said he’d parked at the vehicle, behind which was standing the shooter who put rounds through his windshield. CSI pretty quickly proved that due to the bullet angle, the shooter would have had to been standing on top of a 12 foot ladder.

And of course they examined his revolver - as is done in all officer-involved shootings, whether or not the deputy reported firing his weapon - fired it, and compared the markings on the test sample bullets and those recovered from his car. The rifling in a barrel leaves marks on the projectile specific to that firearm, much like fingerprints are unique. Yep, the bullets came from his gun.

Under questioning he admitted to it. He was looking for glory and attention.

He was allowed to resign because his father was a high-ranking member of the department command staff.

Not long afterward, he was hired at a three-man crossroads village police department and apparently had a flawless career afterward. But when that department was dissolved due to corruption on the chief’s part, his law enforcement career was over, and even the last-chance departments wouldn’t touch him.

Were that to happen today at the same department, he’d be criminally charged with at least a couple felonies, fired, and his state Commission on Peace Officer Standards & Training certificate (basically a law enforcement’s officer’s license to practice) would be permanently revoked.
 
Last edited:
That reminds me of a story I read about many years ago. It seems that a private security guard working at the federal record storage facility in Suburban St Louis Missouri was playing fast draw with his pistol one boring evening, and shot himself in the leg.

Instead of admitting that he was a negligent idiot, he called in a false report of an attack. Of course he got lots of attention from the police and news. This incident happened before CSI was produced - when forensic scientists examined the bullet doctors removed from his leg, he got even more.
 
JackL-3J said:
That reminds me of a story I read about many years ago. It seems that a private security guard working at the federal record storage facility in Suburban St Louis Missouri was playing fast draw with his pistol one boring evening, and shot himself in the leg.

Instead of admitting that he was a negligent idiot, he called in a false report of an attack. Of course he got lots of attention from the police and news. This incident happened before CSI was produced - when forensic scientists examined the bullet doctors removed from his leg, he got even more.
Click to expand...

We had a contract security guard years ago that decided to practice his quick draw in front of a men's room mirror. Yep, he shot the mirror.

Gone.
 
Reminds me of the cop who had a negligent discharge in a school classroom...
 
The dumbass then sued his own agency for allowing the video to be released, claiming it violated his privacy. He outed himself as a DEA agent to the class, and knew he was being videoed. Not only incompetent, but amazing chutzpah as well.
 
We had a cop at the tech school I attended, that had a "Unarmed Only" flag on his employment file.... Seems that his first day after getting issued all his department equipment, he went out to his assigned patrol car and managed to shoot himself getting into the car. If you tried to hand him a weapon anywhere on or off campus, he's start stepping back from you til he could turn and leave.
 
I was managing a TV news department in New York state. One of our photographers, Russ, started taking a marked news car downtown after hours and buying drugs. Great publicity, right? I fired Russ, who was black, and one of our black department managers told me other minority employees were saying I was racist. I pointed out that if I were racist, I probably would not have hired Russ in the first place. The union tried to make it seem the same way, but the grievance failed. I recall his wife also called me on the phone and accused me of being racist.

A short time later, Russ got a job with one of the network-owned stations in New York City. I was surprised that they had not called for a reference, as my station was affiliated with that same network. OK, their choice. Russ died of drug-induced AIDS within a year.
 
Why is this tread feeling locky?
 
Our IT guy got hauled out by the cops, kicking and screaming at his boss, "I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE!"

That was fun.

Now that I think of it, there were quite a few times the cops took people out. One guy got escorted out when the police were called, but he was allowed back - that was a complicated case when a family member of his showed up and started a fight. He ended up fired later after HE started a fight with someone else.

I kind of miss that job, there was usually some sort of excitement at someone else's expense to keep things interesting.
 
I've never been fired, but I once fired myself before I could be fired. I was a dean at my last place of employment. Everything was going great until we got a new provost (my immediate superior). The guy wanted me to redo a bunch of stuff I'd already done so he could take credit, and I refused to put my faculty through that. He also liked being kissed up to, and I'm not the kissing-up type. He also had a very bad habit of promising stuff and failing to deliver. Even with difficult bosses, there are many ways to accomplish what they want (or think they want), and I tried everything, but it was never good enough, and I was getting more and more ****ed off. I finally made a list of things he promised and, as each one fell by the wayside, I checked it off. When I got to the end of the list, I quit, because it was clear to me that one of us would have to go and it wasn't going to be him. I quit during winter break and he'd been out of contact; I sent the resignation straight to the president, who really liked me. The provost must have gotten an earful when he got back, because he had the gall to send an email wishing I'd told him first and can we work this out? I sent an email back saying, "I've been jumping up and down in front of you waving red flags for 6 months. Why should I think you'd pay any closer attention now?"

He was so bad the deans used to get together once a month for lunch and to support each other. He was so blatantly angling to be president at some university somewhere that he was kind of a joke. I experienced no small sense of schadenfreude when he finally got a president position and was fired a year later for violating some labor regulation in the state where he went. So far as I know he never got another position.

I'm not a quitter, but quitting that position was the best thing I ever did. I revived my geology research career and have been happy ever since.
 
judypilot said:
I've never been fired, but I once fired myself before I could be fired. I was a dean at my last place of employment. Everything was going great until we got a new provost (my immediate superior). The guy wanted me to redo a bunch of stuff I'd already done so he could take credit, and I refused to put my faculty through that. He also liked being kissed up to, and I'm not the kissing-up type. He also had a very bad habit of promising stuff and failing to deliver. Even with difficult bosses, there are many ways to accomplish what they want (or think they want), and I tried everything, but it was never good enough, and I was getting more and more ****ed off. I finally made a list of things he promised and, as each one fell by the wayside, I checked it off. When I got to the end of the list, I quit, because it was clear to me that one of us would have to go and it wasn't going to be him. I quit during winter break and he'd been out of contact; I sent the resignation straight to the president, who really liked me. The provost must have gotten an earful when he got back, because he had the gall to send an email wishing I'd told him first and can we work this out? I sent an email back saying, "I've been jumping up and down in front of you waving red flags for 6 months. Why should I think you'd pay any closer attention now?"

He was so bad the deans used to get together once a month for lunch and to support each other. He was so blatantly angling to be president at some university somewhere that he was kind of a joke. I experienced no small sense of schadenfreude when he finally got a president position and was fired a year later for violating some labor regulation in the state where he went. So far as I know he never got another position.

I'm not a quitter, but quitting that position was the best thing I ever did. I revived my geology research career and have been happy ever since.
Click to expand...
Academic politics seem unique. But there are parallels in the private sector.
 
Never been fired, but thought I was once.

Was working for a company out of town. Contract type job, company provided housing, transportation etc., not a bad gig but a labor type job.

One Friday morning showed up to the warehouse we based out of and the boss man was standing at the door. As soon as I get out of the truck, boss tells me go back to the house, pack my stuff, I'm going home. While I knew this job wouldn't last forever, I was caught off guard. I thought I had been doing good there, no warning or nothing. So I asked the boss, what do you mean, what did I do? He responded, nothing, you are just taking a load of equipment back home to headquarters, be back here Monday you are getting a weekend at home.

I suppose he could have led with that...
 
Last edited:
Gilbert Buettner said:
Academic politics seem unique. But there are parallels in the private sector.
Click to expand...
Oh definitely. My husband and I talk about this all the time. With big corporations like the ones he worked for, it's almost as hard to fire people as it is in academia, although of course it is nearly impossible to fire tenured faculty. Even though I spent most of my career at universities, I have a pretty dim view of higher education in this country, especially the last 10 years or so.
 
judypilot said:
although of course it is nearly impossible to fire tenured faculty.
Click to expand...
“Nearly.” The one I’m aware of tore apart the program pretty severely by dividing the students around his issue before they finally fired him.

And honestly, looking back it wasn’t the first time he tried it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top