Almost everyone has a run-in with an angry employer once in a blue moon, but these bosses sure had some insane (and false) accusations!
Stealing Water
“I’m on a diet that requires me to drink a ton of water so I carry around a 1L Nalgene bottle at all times. I’m a mid-level manager at a 60 person company. At the end of the work day, on my way out I pass the water cooler and fill my bottle up for the commute home. Yesterday I was doing just that when our office manager walked up and said the following: ‘You’re leaving for the day, water is for employee’s to drink when they are working in the office only.’ I laughed it off, finished filling my bottle and headed home. I thought she was kidding, or at the very worst having a sh–tty day and lashing out, she wasn’t. Today I get into the office with an email from her to myself, my boss (our CEO/founder), and our HR person saying that I am stealing from the company, that I didn’t stop filling my water bottle and immediately apologize when confronted, and that she is officially reporting this behavior and asking to have it documented. Needless to say we all had a pretty good laugh about it, my boss called me in hysterics and could barely form a sentence he was laughing so hard, and someone wrote ‘Is proper hydration good for the company?’ on my water bottle. Our office manager, however is just walking by my office and glaring this morning” (source).
Making The Company More Money
“I was working retail at Best Buy at the time and they had me working in MP3 players/Cell Phones despite the fact that DVDs/Video Games were really more my wheelhouse. But I worked where they told me and I did my job well. During Christmas season, it got really busy so everyone was running around helping every department. I was hanging out in my own section when a woman comes over, asks about some headphones, and I help her. She then asks me if the Dance Dance Revolution Madcatz mat she bought for her daughter is any good and I ask if she has any of the games (she didn’t) and showed her a slightly more expensive (but better) copy of a Konami mat with a game. She thanked me since she didn’t even know it needed a game and went off. My department manager comes up behind me, tells me to meet him in the break room in five minutes, and -rips- in to me. He says that the department with the best revenue gets bonuses (only true for him, not for the rest of us below him) and we shouldn’t be helping customers in other sections get more expensive things. He says he’d be shocked if I made it past the winter. I just say ‘Yes, sir’ and go back to work. Come January, I get fired by ‘department manager recommendation.’ So, when you go to Best Buy, know that all the departments have their own agendas with you” (source).
Caught Stealing Trash!
“I had an employer of mine write me up for stealing trash. In reality, at the end of my shift, one of my duties was to gather all the trash. Often times, I would pick through the trash and sort all the paper, pop cans, and water bottles in our company’s recycle bin. We had a special promotion with our trash company in which our company would get money based on the number of pounds we recycled. It ended up being $1500 per month AND we didn’t pay our trash bill. So long story short, I got a final write up for stealing company time for sorting our recyclables. So I stopped, the following month, our manager was pissed that she had to pay a trash bill. She called the trash company and the company told her that the past 2 years she didn’t pay for trash because our company would recycle so much, we would get a $1500 check AND free trash service. My boss thought that the checks were a bonus for her. Anyhow, the district manager was reviewing the write ups and saw I got written up for stealing trash, so he called me up and asked me what was going on. I told him the story about the trash company and their promotion. He congratulated me for a job well done. The next day he flew in to talk to my manager. He asked my manager what happened to the $20,000 that she got from the trash company. Apparently, she tried to pin it back on me, and our district manager promptly fired her. After escorting her out, he called me into the office. He told me what happened in that meeting, and offered me a promotion to Assistant Manager” (source).
Stealing $2 Dollars
“I got accused of stealing a salad. I worked as a cashier at a grocery store while in high school. Because they had scheduled me 6 1/2 hours, I only qualified for a 15 minute break, not a 30 minute. So I spend the first 8 or so minutes of my break on the phone with a mechanic working out issues with my car. I then run back to the little cafe near the back of the store that has a salad bar and make a quick salad, which you weigh and price there. By this time I had about 5 minutes left on break, and the manager was very strict about not going over your 15 minutes. So I stand at the cafe register for a good minute, and no one is to be found. I quickly eat my salad, and then take the sticker up to the front registers to pay for the $1.99 salad. I go back on the clock, and about 20 minutes later I am called into the office. They say a situation has occurred, but don’t tell me what. They said they are sending me home for the day. So I come back in the next day for my shift, and they call me into the office again. In the office is the store manager, the assistant manager, the office manager, the cafe manager, and my shift supervisor. Mind you I am a 16 year old kid at their first job who had never been in any sort of trouble. They accuse me of stealing the salad because ‘despite purchasing the salad, as our records do indicate, you consumed the salad before the purchase.’ I explained to them how the cashier at the cafe was nowhere to be found, and how if I wanted to eat during my break at that point, I would have had to eat it back in the cafe and then pay for it up front. They tell me to go home, and that they will contact me tomorrow regarding if I keep my job or not. I left in tears, but then got really angry at the severe overreaction, so I came back in an hour later and told them I quit” (source).
“More than one way to skin the catfish”
“I once used the phrase ‘more than one way to skin a catfish’ around a manager who had never heard the phrase. She called me into her office later to ask why I was saying such disgusting things, accused me of being a sicko who kills animals, and then threatened to fire me if she heard anything like it ever again” (source).
Suspicious Behavior In The Cooler
“After working at Subway for 5 years, 3 of those being a manager, I was accused of turning off the cameras in the store and getting high in the cooler. I quit shortly after. Turned out the owner was trying to set me up to fire me”(source).
Helping Steal A Large Stuffed Animal
“I worked in a souvenir shop at an amusement park. It was the Fourth of July, one of the busiest days because of the park’s fireworks show. We were also understaffed. The shop was just inside the gate, so it would get swamped just before closing, as people bought the stuff they didn’t want to walk around with all day. I was left alone in the shop just before closing time running the cash register as people flowed in. It was utter chaos. While closing out the register that night, it was noticed that a large stuffed animal had been stolen. The manager simply could not fathom that one person manning a swamped store can’t prevent theft because not all the displays are within sight of the register. I think it must have been a team effort, with one or two people getting my attention in one area while the other walked off with the toy, but I didn’t say that because I really didn’t know when or how it happened. Bastard accused me of being in on it and looking the other way while a friend stole it so we could profit later. I didn’t even know what to say. I was 17, it was my first job, and I cried for days under the assumption that every job I’d ever hold would be like that one” (source).
Monitoring Toilet Activity
“My boss thought I was goofing off in the restroom. For a few months there he wouldn’t let me flush the toilet until he came in and made sure I actually used it” (source).
Karma Is A B–ch
“Back when I was in high school, I worked for my town’s parks dept. One time, my boss (who was a total sleazeball who sexually harassed every girl there, and hated me mostly for not being female) calls me in to his office. While there, he accuses me of stealing a $3 check, and then says that I have to be let go. I tell him point-blank that if I was to steal from the department, it would be something a lot more than a measly 3 dollar check. Later on, I find out from a friend of mine that he found the check underneath his desk, and then a month later someone finally reported him for harassment and he got fired too. Karma’s a b—h yo” (source).
Nothing Is Better Than Revenge
“My first job with the state was awful. My supervisor was an idiot in every sense of the word. I remember once, I was called into a meeting with our bureau chief. He asked us some questions about office matters, and my supervisor flat out made up lies about me that were completely against my character. I couldn’t hold in my frustration and blew up at her, told my bureau chief I wasn’t there to play childish games, and then walked out of the meeting. I ended up winning that one, and got a promotion that paid twice as much as that terrible supervisor. It was one of those awesome revenge moments where nobody got hurt” (source).
Caught Being TOO Productive
“I’ve worked as a city worker before. I was constantly told that I was working too hard. These old guys don’t want to look bad as they sit around all day making lewd comments about girls that are too young for them, so they get mad at me for actually doing stuff. I almost got fired a few times because of it. Just made the days take forever, pissed me off” (source).
Accused of Not Wanting The Job
“Because I stood up to my boss over my request to be compensated for meeting with a company customer on my own time, she accused me (first to my coworkers, then to me directly) of not working very hard, and not really wanting that job, because my parents are financially stable and since I’m an only child, I’ll ‘inherit everything when they die,’ so there’s no reason for me to work now. I was 24-25 at the time and my parents are like 50 something and both quite healthy. So it’s not like my parents are in any immediate danger of dying! She even said, she only wants people who ‘Really want to work here’ as in people too desperate for work to ever think about standing up for themselves” (source).
Daydreaming Of Australia
“I worked as an electronic note taker for deaf people a few years back. It’s just like how it sounds – using networked laptops to provide a real time précis of meetings/lectures/court cases etc. For long assignments we’d work in pairs. On one occasion my coworker and I were talking wistfully about our dreams and aspirations. I said how I’d love to work in Australia one day. Pretty innocuous comment, right? My coworker somehow interpreted this to mean I was leaving for Australia and told my boss, who told HR and asked for advice. The company’s second in command overheard this and went ballistic. While my boss was in court and incommunicado, I was suspended pending investigation. They wouldn’t tell me what I had done other than ‘defrauding the company.’ A day – one day – later, the second in command called and told me I was fired. Turns out they thought I was poaching clients and using company equipment to do work for them off the books (we kept the laptops at home for jobs that finished too late to return to the office). They said I was planning to set up my own company and that I would be charged with theft, fraud and breach of contract. I was in disbelief. Long story short, my boss had my back and threatened to quit if they didn’t take me back. She was well-liked by the CEO, and I was allowed to present my case to him. So I wrote a long letter then came in a few days later for a meeting. Obviously a one-day investigation was bullsh–t, and I had merely voiced a pipe-dream that became some Machiavellian plot thanks to Chinese whispers. In the end the CEO gave me back my job, and said the guy who fired me had been ‘having a bad day’ and overreacted. I demanded and got a written apology, and went back to work the next week. It took all my strength to remain civil to my coworker and the second in command after that. Two years later I moved to Australia and am doing well for myself. Didn’t take any clients with me, though!” (source).
Spending Too Much Time In the Bathroom
“I had worked at a manufacturing plant first as a janitor but later in the electronics testing area. About six months after starting the electronics position, my boss calls me into his office and shuts the door. He proceeds to tell me that somebody told him I was spending an excessive amount of time in the bathroom. Pulled out my bottle of pills for my Ulcerative Colitis and he got very embarrassed. I had worked as a janitor through a number a flares (rarely missing any work because of it) but nobody complained about my bathroom habits. Now some busybody decided to monitor my bathroom habits. I tried to find out who it was (never did) because if he was so interested in my bowel habits, I should leave him one to examine for himself” (source).
Stealing An Old Sweatshirt
“I worked at a call center for a few months a while back. Over the summer I bought a hoodie at Old Navy pretty on sale, but I didn’t really start wearing it until it got cooler. The first day I wore it to work, a girl at my office came over and told me she liked my sweatshirt and asked her where I got it. I told her I had bought it at an Old Navy a while ago for really cheap. I went to lunch, and when I came back she IM-ed me (we had work IM) and told me she had called the Old Navy where I bought my hoodie and they told her it wasn’t on sale, then outright accused me of stealing one that she had. I first started working there with like 15 other people, and apparently when I first started there she had left it in the training room when she was helping train us, and she came back the next day and it was gone. I was pretty insulted and told her she was completely wrong, then e-mailed my boss and told her I’d like to speak to her privately. When I spoke to her I explained the situation and told her that I just wanted to let her know I had purchased the sweatshirt and not stolen it from her, and I just wanted to let her know that in case it was mentioned to her. She told me that the other girl had already told her, but that she thought she was being ridiculous” (source).