It's never easy getting fired. Even if one hates their job or is terrible at it, there's still no bigger blow to the self-esteem than getting canned by an employer. However, some people take their reactions to getting fired a bit too far. Yeah, it stinks, but there's no reason to cause a huge scene, right? These fired people beg to differ. Content has been edited for clarity.
Well, That Was Drastic
“I worked at a Customer Service contractor for Rogers Wireless in Canada. They weren’t fired, but had been threatened to be fired for some bogus policy reasons (they have silly policies that are quite frankly not legally enforceable, they tend to prey on the uneducated and who wouldn’t have the funds or knowledge to challenge them in court.)
Anyway, he quit by stripping down to nothing, putting on some kind of strappy thong type thing, writing I QUIT on his buttcheeks, and running in and out of every single room in the building until security took him out.”
That Did A Lot Of Damage
“I was managing a small cell phone store in a strip mall kind of place a few years back and only had a couple employees under me. This one guy would come in late all the time, generally put no effort in, etc and I basically laid down the law with him after a couple weeks and told him to shape up or get fired. He got better, but only for like a week, then showed up late again. I don’t mean like five minutes late, I mean like two hours late.
He gave me some lame excuse. I warned him and told him I’d fire him next time he showed up more than 5 minutes late. He told me to stop being so uptight and to get the stick out of my rear, so I told him to get himself out of my store. He walks out of the store, goes out to his car, gets a baseball bat out of the trunk, walks over to my car, and proceeds to basically go ham on my car. Now this little strip mall is literally right across the street from the police station, so as soon as he grabbed the bat, I called the local PD. They come over within probably 90 seconds and arrest him. Fantastic response time, but not good enough.
I drove a half decent car at the time worth around $7k and the car was basically totaled. I couldn’t believe how much havoc he wreaked on that car in 90 seconds. He smashed every window, both headlights, royally messed up the hood/fenders, and broke my spoiler in half. It was astonishing.
Long story short, the guy ended up getting a felony charge and serving jail time, in addition to having to pay reparations. I ended up getting cut a check from my insurance company and buying a newer model of the same car, but parked it around the back so customers/employees wouldn’t know what kind of car I had. Something like fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.”
She Cheated The Company
“I caught the assistant manager absent from the store while clocked in. I asked the girl working the front counter and she said that this witch was leaving for several hours of every single shift, but claimed she was clocking out. I would’ve fired her either way for leaving without permission so often, but I went through and watched the video and checked her timecards and she was constantly leaving for hours without clocking out. I waited for her for almost an hour and she showed back up right when her shift was supposed to end, I’m guessing to clock out and keep the charade up.
I asked her what was up and she told me she had just left to give her sister a ride to work across town and that she must have somehow forgotten to clock out for it. I told her that I had been watching the videos and she immediately looked at the other girl who had been working alone in her absence and slammed her fists down on the counter and called her a ‘see you next Tuesday.’ I told her that the other girl had actually tried to cover for her and was facing discipline herself. I asked for her keys and shirts and she claimed she didn’t have any of it. I told her to go home and get it all immediately or she would be charged for it on her final check.
She showed back up several hours later, after I had sent the other girl home and called in a friend to help me at the store. She walked in the door, called me a stupid honky (but worse), threw her shirts on the floor, and threw her keys across the store, scattering them. Then she started crying and called me a lying sack of you know what, and saying that her and her kids were going to go homeless because of me. I told her she shouldn’t have cheated the company. That made her explode. She started knocking stuff off the counter, screaming, and threatening my family.
Luckily, the buddy I called in stepped between and handed her a note. She looked at him, ripped it in half, and dropped it as she walked out. When I picked up the note, it was a criminal trespass form he had filled out with her information and presented to her, essentially banning her from the property under threat of arrest. I’m frankly surprised that that got her to leave, but whatever works, works.”
Small Yet Effective
“Not an employer, but my boyfriend had a co-worker get fired for repeatedly just not showing up for work.
They worked at a small chain gas station/store type place that required all employees to wear a necklace with a small button to call police in emergencies. This ‘necklace’ would only work within a 50 ft radius of the store, but could be used in any one of the 10+ stores.
Well, this guy keeps his necklace and decides to go out one day, driving slowly past EACH store while pressing the button. The police, being required to go, showed up at every store until they realized what was going on.”
“They Could Not Be Salvaged”
“I was a security officer at a large aerospace company– one that makes fighter jets AND the decks they fly off of (if you want to know).
One guy got wind of his termination and got a large power drill and drilled holes in several aircraft skins. Now, considering that these skins never cost less than $50,000 each, he did a lot of damage. They could not be salvaged, either.
Another employee (who wasn’t being fired but re-assigned to another job, same pay etc) jumped off the top floor of a 5-story building. The security officer who was 50 feet away from his landing point took a stress retirement; he said he’d never forget that sound.”
Because He Didn’t Believe Him
“I was in a small supermarket buying some groceries after work and this customer asked someone over to help him with a self service machine. The customer wasn’t aggressive or rude and he just commented on the machine ‘this darn things never work for me’ in a joking manner or something like that. And the staff member went crazy. Got in his face and was yelling ‘don’t disrespect me bruv’ and all this london wanna-be gangster lingo. Like completely went off the deep end. So the customer called over a manager, and this kid was still going off at the customer right in front of the manager. The customer walked out saying he was going to file a complaint.
Then this kid starts saying to the manager that the customer was making it all up and he had done nothing wrong, even thought he had been threatening the customer with violence in front of the manager. Then when the manager told his that he didn’t believe him, the kid then threatened to stab the manager for not believing him.”
“Good Luck Clean This Up!”
“I used to work at a fast food restaurant. This guy was caught stealing money from customers by essentially charging 50c to use the register (which has no charge) by doing it in cash out. He remembers how many times he does it and stops when he reaches $50. This might sound time-consuming, but in an 8-hour shift on cashier, it’s pretty quick to rack up. The customer won’t notice 50c extra charge and the tills are never down.
It was a smart scheme, until he got caught. He lost it because he thought they wouldn’t be able to fire him because he isn’t stealing from the store blah blah blah. He rips off his uniform, storms out the store, turns around as says ‘eff you, good luck cleaning this up’ and pull the lever on the anti-fire mechanism, filling the entire store with this foam that puts out massive fires (basically if the store is going to burn down/kill someone you pull it).
It was a $20,000 cleanup. All stock ruined. The store took him to court and being a multi-billionaire company with some very good friends who happen to be lawyers, I assume he lost.
He probably stole around $500 over a month and it cost him tens of thousands. So. Stupid.”
Incredibly Aggressive
“The fired employee punched me in the side of the head while my back was turned, then proceeded to kick me repeatedly with his steel toe boots for over a minute before he was pushed off me. This was in the middle of a warehouse in front of others at lunchtime. I went to the emergency room and miraculously had no injuries or sign of concussion, outside a burst blood vessel in my eye and black and blue splotches all over.
He was high on pills that he later admitted he didn’t even know what was in them. He was fired because an hour earlier, he threatened me and then said he knew where my house was and my kids. He wasn’t a psychopath, but he had a serious substance problem and that was the last straw.”
At Least It Was Entertaining
“A good friend of mine hated his job to no end. He didn’t want to leave though because the money was good. But eventually he got an offer for an even higher amount so he quit the very next day.
Now how did he quit? Like a regular dude going into the manager’s office and submitting his request? Nope.
The dude hired a mariachi band and paraded with them through the company to the tune of something like ‘I don’t work here anymooooore, I don’t have to endure you anymooooore’ I don’t remember the lyrics, but they were funny to us employees.”
“The Only To Get Anywhere Is By Lying”
“When I interviewed her, I was hiring for bakery clerk and a cashier. She was the first person I ever fired. An 18-year-old college drop out who lasted one and a half shifts and was obviously carting a lot of drama with her. I was not dealing with that.
I tell her that we’re releasing her from her probationary period, and I swear her head popped open and a shining ball of crazy came flying out. She goes on to say she hates her job and wants to slap a customer with a cookie. I ask her why she told me she loved food service in her interview. She said she knows the only way to get anywhere is by lying, and she learned that from her father who makes six figures a year so excuse me if she doesn’t take my word for it.
If she’d told me in her interview that she dropped out of college because of her pill addiction, then I never would have hired her.
It really reminded me of a bad break up in high school more than anything. After she finally left the room, my senior manager who had helped me break the news to her turns to me and says ‘that was the worst reaction I’ve ever gotten, by far.'”
That Had To Be Awkward
“Once a guy got fired from a supermarket I was at. He was a weird guy who worked part-time while he worked in a slaughterhouse. He got fired because he just would drift off for like 20 minutes in the back, just sitting around doing nothing. When he got sacked (well he didn’t get his contract renewed after his initial training month), he acted like he knew it was coming. He just said ‘I’m going to the bathroom’ and my boss who was with him was a little taken aback but was like ‘yeah fine’ after about 20 minutes he’s still in there and my boss goes to check on him.
He was just sitting in there having a wank. The cubicle door was shut but my boss swung it open revealing Slaughterhouse Tom taking care of his own meat.
Apparently, my boss just walked out and five minutes later the guy come out and left never to be seen again.”
Business Ruined
“My grandfather was a logger in the Australian bush during the late ’70s and early ’80s. He had an offsider who was generally lazy, so my granddad chose to sack him near the start of ’83.
The day after the Ash Wednesday bush fires (Feb 16, 1983), Granddad sees smoke coming from the hills near his patch of bush. As he’s rushing up there, he was almost run off the road by a truck coming in the opposite direction, which looked a lot like his former employees.
Sure enough, Granddad gets up to site and finds all his logging equipment, machines and such, ablaze. Nothing salvageable. Business ruined.
They were never able to prove it was the former offsider because of the nature of the other bush-fires in the area. The guy must have had a guilty conscience though because he tried to kill himself with a nail-shooter that evening. He blew out his two front teeth and tore his lip up. Apparently, he said it hurt too much to try it a second time.”
Chance After Chance
“I fired a new hire, a 20-year-old apprentice, at my hangar after he backed a golf cart into an aircraft and didn’t own up to it (even with 12 witnesses).
He left the building and then came back with his mother. They refused to leave the hangar until we gave him another chance. I went over all of his ‘second chances’ that I gave him and told her to get out. She picked up an oil filter off a table and threw it at me. However, the oil filter had oil in it and splattered all over the two of them.
I asked them to leave again and she called the cops. The officer that came was one of the local airport rats and promptly arrested both of them for trespassing and tampering with aircraft on federal property.
I was subpoenaed a few months later to meet a judge for a statement. I had forgotten about the whole thing by then, so I went in kind of blind. The judge was her husband and while I was in his chambers, tried to demand that I give his step son another chance.
When I sat down with the judge, first thing he told me was that they had dropped the charges against his wife and stepson. Then he started begging for me to give the kid another chance. I told him that the reason the kid got fired was he drove a golf cart into an aircraft and denied it ever happened. He caused over a thousand in damages and a dozen people saw the whole thing.
The stepdad told me that he was told ‘someone else was driving the cart.’ He also told me that the kid would go through a job a week and getting fired ‘was always someone else’s fault.’
We came to the mutual understanding that his stepson was a dirtbag.”
To Be A Fly On That Wall
“We let go one of our paramedics and she lost her mind in the middle of the office, cursing everyone out. She then directed her hate at the CEO whose door was shut, but has a window. He saw her pointing towards him not knowing why, so he smiled and waved. This did not help matters. She called him a Rumpelstiltskin looking mother eff-er and slammed the door and smoked a joint in the parking lot.
Another time, the most amusing one, was the guy who got fired just said ok, but went back to his desk and started taking calls again. We had to tell him we meant immediately.”
Mental Yo-Yo
“I was the union rep trying to save this girl’s job. She had massive issues with her boss, so I talk to HR and we can’t work out what is going on. She makes all these claims about harassment (she made no effort with her appearance, piercings, short and fat) which seemed far-fetched, but you never know. Her boss clearly hates her. So HR and I manage to get her a different job in another department. It was a clean slate for her with and a boss, who was a bit of a nuisance, but a friend who had a good heart.
Anyway, a few months down the line, it’s all falling apart as she is up and down mentally like a yo-yo. She spends nearly a day telling me all these issues. I manage to get it down to ten point of grievance (by now we all realized that any mention she couldn’t do the job, she just would start making all these claims against the manager). So, HR, the manager, and I all have a pre-meeting (basically you discuss what you are going to discuss, makes life easier), then we have the most insane meeting ever. About four hours later we break up, having put into place stuff to manage most of her complaints about workload and the like.
HR and I are sitting their drinking a coffee trying to get over the meeting (we were quite close, but that’s another story). Then we get called as she has locked herself in the room and called security claiming she has taken an overdose of pills (bought in the canteen – why the canteen sold her about a hundred pain killer pills, we have no idea). Anyway, we eventually get her carted off to hospital in an ambulance. Then we phone her boyfriend, whose reaction was a very bored, ‘What? Again?’
Naturally, she hadn’t taken the pills. HR moved her to a different part of the business and I didn’t see her again, but I did run into her manager who had endless issue with her before she finally quit the job.”
All Least They Covered The Fees
“Cop here, we had a missing person do something horrible.
He got let go from a company he’d worked at for around 11 years. The guy was a frequent and abusive drinker, but managed to keep up appearances at work as he was made redundant, not fired.
His family life deteriorated, and while he didn’t have a partner, he apparently isolated himself from his family. His dog was his best friend, so the fact that the dog had gone missing was quite refreshing.
I checked his old workplace and there was no sign of anything suspicious. I let security there know and the guy said he’d let us know if he turned up.
The following morning, a dog is found running around the park and I’m called immediately to see if it was this guy’s dog. I’d be off shift for literally like 4 hours while another officer was handling things, but I’d come back in to see if we could make any more developments as time was now of the essence.
Then, my work number rang. It was security at his old work. As I picked up the phone, I heard the radio chirp up and ask for a unit to head down there for a jumper.
The poor guy had walked into reception and said he had to collect some other things from a co-worker. He had been allowed in and then walked to the 6th floor and threw himself off the fire escape.
His company execs were devastated and offered to cover his funeral fees for the family.”
She Seemed Upbeat At First
“This rather sad woman who worked at the gas station I manage didn’t take her firing, or anything really, too well. She had really messed up priorities and such.
When we hired her, she seemed like an upbeat person, but in the first week I find out she was asking customers for money and even ‘went home’ with a customer after her shift. She would talk to certain customers for several minutes while a line was forming, and although she was told multiple times to shorten her conversations, she persisted. She was the type of person who lacked the ability to absorb what was being told her.
Eventually, it was just too much and I got clearance from the owner to fire her. So, I call her up saying she has to come in for a talk and she obviously has a clue what’s going on, insisting I tell her RIGHT NOW. She kept refusing to come in to the point I have to turn to the owner (sitting at an adjacent desk) and tell him that he needs to talk to her as she won’t let me get a word in.
The owner gets on the phone with her and tells her she needs to come in and talk about her future here/it’s not working out (something or other). She just blurts out ‘OH F YOU A-HOLE!’ and hangs up the phone.
This witch COMES BACK to get her last check on Friday even though we mailed it out and acts just as bubbly as ever, apologizing and saying how she was having a bad day. But, later that night, she comes back to use the ATM. When she realizes there’s no money in her account, she starts beating and punching the machine. She has a general break down, police were called, she fought and had to be tased. It was a mess.”
Just Give It Up Man
“There was a chronically late guy given warnings on more than ten occasions and even given a formal write up as a final warning.
He strolls into work 1.5 hours late. I had already contacted HR and started the process by the time he got in. I called him into my office and he said he couldn’t right now because he had to keep an appointment with a client. I told him he didn’t have to worry about it. He stepped inside and I proceeded to tell him he was fired.
This guy just went into hysteria, started balling and crying and begging for another chance. I looked at him and told him it’s his own fault. He knew if he came in late again that was it, he signed the document and we were done.
He wouldn’t take no for an answer, I finally called HR and a security guard had to show him out of the building. That didn’t stop him from filling up my voice mailbox with pleas for his job back.”