When you're happily employed, it's best to avoid writing egregious posts on your various social media channels. Why? Well, in some shape or form, one's activity on social media will/could lead to being canned by your employer. Now, behold these examples of someone losing their job (justifiably or not) due to social media posts.
Customer Service To The Rescue
“I worked customer support for a mobile game company. I was honest with a disheartened customer, who had complained that recent changes had made the game pay to win. It had, in truth, been a glitch with an update. I told them as much, assuring them the team would be fixing it in the next update. But then the games profits skyrocketed. The team kept the glitch, and put out a statement describing the change as an intentional one designed to improve the play experience. But there was my name, plastered all over the game forums, claiming the opposite. I technically worked for a separate company that provided support for several studios, but the studio behind this game was our biggest customer. They approached my bosses, furious I jeopardised their cash cow, and demanded I be fired. I promptly became familiar with the underside of the bus, as I was gone within the week.” Source
Not The Best Smoke Break To Brag About
“A co-worker of mine was fired recently because he got caught sneaking off work to smoke weed and drink by Facebook. This moron would post post photos of him smoking and drinking on Facebook. The boss found out and predictably fired him on the spot. The best part, this guy was almost 30 years old, and not just some dumb teenager.” Source
The Hospital Employees Who Showed No Decency
“I work in a hospital and there was a police shooting in my area a couple of years ago and multiple officers were brought into our ER. One officer was DOA and a number of idiot hospital employees posted condolences on their Facebook pages with the name of the officer before the family was officially informed. If memory serves 7 or 8 employees were rightfully fired for that one.” Source
Posting About An Employee’s Bad Driving Has Consequences
“This happened to me many years ago. I was on the job for a week at a law firm, and had to ride with one of the female employees to the UPS store. She was a terrible driver, and almost wrecked multiple times. I posted on Facebook, “One week on the job and my coworker is trying to kill me; worst driver ever.” The next day I was called into my bosses office with the girl sitting there with an expressionless look on her face, and there was a printout of my post. It was awkward and they fired me on the spot. All of my account information was also set to private, so they figured a way to check my activity.” Source
Betrayal By A Fellow Employee
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“So I was working with this guy called John and he and I were basically vying for the same upper management position. He was always courteous towards me so I thought even though we were rivals in a sense that we both mutually respected one another. Then he invites me to a 4th of July party, I thought why not. I got fired shortly afterwards because he secretly took pictures of me drinking and sent them to our boss and said I had an alcohol problem. I don’t have an alcohol problem.” Source
You Fired Me Because Of That?
“I got fired from an internship for posting on Reddit before. It was a very small environmental engineering consulting firm. We were doing work on a site that had lead an arsenic contamination on it. The site was very dusty, and if it didn’t rain for a few days the dust would often kick up and blow onto the street next to the site, which happened to be the main road in this semi-smallish town. Someone mentioned on Reddit, in a totally unrelated way, that they were from this town. I made a mention of the contamination, and told the dude that if he ever saw dust coming off the site that he should contact the engineers which were housed above one of the local bars. Apparently this guy didn’t really want the site to be redeveloped at all because of the already high congestion in the surrounding roads, and he called and complained and mentioned my post on Reddit. The company was so small it was obvious it was me who posted it, and I fessed up about what I had said, and immediately deleted the post. Even though I didn’t do anything illegal, or even remotely immoral, I was fired because I was seen as a liability. F–k that. People deserve to know if the dust they’re breathing in could give them cancer. I moved onto a different field (marine biology) and haven’t even remotely looked back.” Source
Don’t Lie That You Have An Illness, Especially A Super Contagious One
“Former Chipotle manager here. As many of you know, Chipotle gives away free s–t on Halloween. So it’s a mandatory weekend for everyone to work. Well, one of our employees called off that Thursday saying he had swine flu…right. Of course he posted pics of his weekend partying on his FB. Upon which he was friends with our kitchen manager, general manager, and district manager. Per company policy (and common f–king sense) you can’t return to work from serious contagious s–t without a doctor’s note. So he shows back up on Wednesday acting all fine and saying the doc cleared him. Oh, but his mom threw his release note away. Too bad buddy, we need that s–t or you can’t work. Since we didn’t know when he would have it, we only gave him one day on the schedule anyway. So then HIS MOMMY calls me and asks why he can’t work. I ask her, if she went to a restaurant and found out a cook hadn’t proven he was cleared from having swine flu, would she eat there? She saw my point. But it’s not his fault she threw away the note! They were REMODELING! I asked, why can’t the doc write a new one? Well, he went on vacation! …couldn’t the receptionist or a P.A. get them something? She huffed and hung up on me. The next day he puts on FB ‘Dear Chipotle and managers: instead of cutting hours on someone, why not grow the f–king balls to fire them outright? Suck my d—.’ Pretty easy to let him go after that…” Source
Not The Best Way To Treat Customers, Dude
“I had to fire an employee for a tweet he wrote about a customer. He tweeted “(customer’s full name) would be a great name for a gay porn star.” I found out about it when the customer’s lawyer called me the next day threatening action. Turns out the guy worked for the local newspaper and obsessively searched his name on all social media.” Source
Several Employees Hatred Of Their Employer Creates Some Turmoil
“A company I worked for had it written into their 7-page contract that you were not allowed to even reference said company on social media. Anyone in breach would be fired instantly. There’s a page on Facebook called “We Hate __” that’s currently one of the world’s biggest corporate-hate pages. It all started when someone working in our call centre posted online about how much the customers suck. Then began something of a war between the staff and customers, customers posting on employees’ walls and vice versa. The company was/is a major player in its market (essentially had a monopoly) and there was a noticeable drop in sales that year. All in all, around 20 people were fired.” Source
Mistaken Identity
“I was let go from the nation’s third largest insurance company for what were called ‘offensive tweets.’ Apparently someone with my similar name was tweeting vulgar things to comedy accounts and they brought me into HR and terminated me. Yes I sued for wrongful termination, so I could finish getting my MBA.” Source
You Really, REALLY Shouldn’t Have Said That
“Joined a games studio alongside a guy who’d just finished his philosophy degree. He felt that the game’s official forums were the best place to discuss whether disabled people would be “of as much value as pigs” after a post-apocalyptic event, and if they should be simply slaughtered and eaten. All using his company account, of course.” Source
You’re Hired…No, Wait! You’re Fired!
“Not me, but the company I work for. A prospective employee just passed his interview, and was told that all he needs to do is pass a drug test and a physical and he would start on Monday. The company Facebook guy found the new hire on Facebook and the guy had just posted 20 minutes after the interview, ‘S–t! Anyone know how to pass a drug test in 24 hours?!'” Source
Every Day Will Be A Sick Day
“A former colleague of mine posted about how he was going to use up all his sick leave then quit. He posted it at 9am, he was told he had no more job at 11.” Source
A NSFW Pizza Delivery
“Didn’t lose my job, but I watched a friend lose his over a tweet. He tweeted “So getting head while delivering pizzas is pretty sweet” one night while he was working. The next morning he tweeted “YO F–K YOU PAPA JOHNS I don’t need you or your stupid job anyway” or something to that effect. I’ve never laughed so hard in my life.” Source
That Time You Stopped A Crime And Were Rewarded With A Pink Slip
“Worked at GameStop until 2010. The store was in a mall and parents would always leave their kids in the store and go do their shopping..Sometimes the children would cry, sometimes they’d pee themselves, even had one #2. Parents would get mad at us for not bringing them to the bathroom (What the Sh-t?) or start screaming at their kids for not just playing games for a few hours without causing any problems. I tweeted about how the store wasn’t there to babysit children and never really thought about that tweet again.. until a few months later, same thing. Parent drops kid off in store, leaves. 20 minutes later, an older looking guy is outside the store, on his flip phone, aiming it at the store. He’s creeping me out but I continue offering pointless warranties to customers while waiting for my next break and then, I noticed him walk near the entrance of the store and ask that kid where his parents are. This seemed really fishy and the guy looked beyond suspicious, I was thinking he could be a pedophile and I was right. He gets the kid to go with him, I call up mall security so they could check it out and they caught him before he left the mall. He was arrested, the kid was crying, asking for his mom.. Who mall security could not reach because as it turns out, she went to some stores outside of the mall area and she didn’t actually come back for another 2 hours, at which point she threatened to sue me, GameStop, the mall,etc. Security guard lady told her that child services were called, they all walked away. That was the last time I saw them. Few days later , District Manager (DM) shows up in store and I was fired on the spot because that lady made a complaint, DM found my twitter and informed me that my approach to yesterday’s dilemma & my tweet about how GameStop isn’t a babysitting service has made them believe that I don’t have the “GameStop spirit.” Both the manager and district manager told me I could use them as a reference on my resume though, which was great until they both lost their jobs a few weeks later.” Source
That Awkward Moment When Your FB Profile Is Clean But They Still Don’t Hire You
“I was once passed over for a job because I barely use Facebook. They straight up told me that they couldn’t trust me because of how little info was on my page. For future reference, I’m sorry employers that 90% of my Facebook page is related to Starcraft and/or miscellaneous gaming. I’m sorry that I don’t get drunk and post embarrassing photos of things you could fire me over. My personal life is my business and not Facebook’s.” Source
Just Met A Celebrity, So Here’s Their Private Info
“I used to work for Geek Squad in college and a coworker was fired when a famous actor came in and she posted on Facebook a lot of his private info. Like full name came into our store and bought this and this and has a black Amex card and stuff he had on his computer…not once but on two separate occasions.” Source
Social Media Marketing Gone Wrong
“A few years ago I knew a girl doing social media for Entenmann’s (the pastry people). Well, this was also around the time of the Casey Anthony trial, and the day the verdict was released she tweeted “Who’s #notguilty about eating all the tasty treats they want?!” It SERIOUSLY blew up and she ended up getting fired a few days later. She was pretty upset about it for a while, but tells the story at parties now and gets that it’s pretty funny.” Source