It's a wonder some of these blue-collar workers made it through the interview, let alone landed the job, considering the fact that they are some of the dumbest people in the world. Their stupidity landed them in the unemployment line, likely not for the first time.
(Content has been edited for clarity)
She Thought She Could Earn Herself A Little Cash On The Side
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“A girl decided to start stealing some of our products from the warehouse and sold them on eBay as brand-new, with factory warranty. It only took a couple of weeks before we started getting calls for tech support for products with serial numbers we did not have registered as ‘sold’ in the system. Our brief investigation led straight to her.
She was fired, of course, and legal action pursued, but the sad angle to the story is that her father worked there, too, and we were forced to make him stay at home with no pay until it could be determined beyond any doubt that he wasn’t involved.”
She Couldn’t Believe What Her Coworker Had Told Her
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“I worked for a major appliance manufacturer.
One day, on the machine/process that made bare metal cooktops into shiny black cooktops, there was a woman tasked with taking the cooktops off the ‘Wash’ line, where oil from the forming process was washed off, and place them on the ‘Application’ line, where the powder was applied.
This woman was a devastatingly cute redhead. She came to me, pale in the face (paler than normal anyway) to tell me a certain individual had informed her that he wasn’t wearing anything under his Tyvek (a paper suit used to keep the enamel from another process off your clothes).
I talked to the guy and he said yes, he told her that, and he laughed about it. He’d been a problem before and we had to walk him out.
Then I had to go back to the prep room, where I had to get his clothes. He really WASN’T wearing anything under his Tyvek. Gah.”
What Should Have Been A Minor Inconvenience Turned Into An Assault Charge
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“My mum’s best friend managed all non-medical staff in a hospital – so all the cleaners, porters, caterers and admin staff.
She had hired a porter who had indicated on his application that he had no prior criminal record. They did check up on this stuff, but it can take a while to get an answer back, so he had been working there for eight weeks when she got a notification that he’d lied and had a prior conviction.
Unless it’s something violent, which this wasn’t, you can still work with the public, it just needs to be cleared a certain way. So, she had to call him into her office and tell him he was being suspended without pay while HR sorted it all out. That would take a few weeks, then she could rotate him back in.
So, just to be clear – even though the guy had lied on his application, and the situation was all his own fault, she was telling him that he would still have a job there after they processed his HR stuff. Good outcome, right?
He didn’t think so. He heard ‘suspended without pay’ and screamed at her that she was an effing bimbo. He then threw a stapler at her, chased her around her desk and out into the corridor, where he grabbed her by the throat and threatened to kill her.
Needless to say, that got him fired. He also arrested for assault. So now he does have the type of criminal record which will severely limit his employment opportunities. Well done, mate.”
The Nursing Assistant Nearly Killed A Kid
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“I’m a nurse. I used to take care of children with Traumatic Brain Injuries and other severe cognitive disabilities. One such child was on a ventilator at night to provide some amount of daily support but she would come off of the vent in the morning. Only the nurses touched ventilators. Techs/nursing assistants were not trained to do so. However, I worked with one particular nursing assistant who was really spaced out all the time (pretty sure she was baked every day) and thought that she was going to be helpful. I would remove this particular child’s vent every morning. The important thing to know is that when a ventilator is covering your airway, that’s great when it’s ON, as in powered up and giving breaths. When it’s off and still fully attached, it could cause suffocation.
One morning when I removed the ventilator and powered the system down, my pager went off so I rushed out of the room. I figured I’d come back after to properly put the vent tubing back with the vent and away from the bed.
I handled the paged issue and went to the nurse’s desk to get something and here comes space cadet nursing assistant, all proud of herself. She was like, ‘Oh hey I put so and so’s vent back on, so she’s all set,’ all content and carefree, knowing she was working well out of her scope of practice. I almost crapped my scrubs. I had been out of that room for several minutes, long enough for the poor patient with the ventilator that was powered down and occluding her air away to suffocate. She was not a pretty color and was breathing through the whole circuit (like breathing through a two-foot hose attached to a toaster at the end) so long story short, there was some manual breaths and lots of 02 provided to get the poor kid back, without any damage, luckily. The nursing assistant was fired.”
He Not Only Stole A Car Off The Lot, He Tried To Pin The Blame On His Coworker
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“There were two teenage employees of a Chevy dealership I worked at. One was a good kid, the other one was a jerk. They were hired to do menial tasks and were basically errand boys. Two weeks into their job, the jerk pulled up to the good kid in a brand new Corvette with like five miles on it and said, ‘Get in, we’re going to get lunch.’ The good kid didn’t want to because they aren’t supposed to drive cars off the lot, but the jerk talked him into it.
Instead of going to lunch, the jerk drove a mile away and proceeded to do laps around a large building (it was a Sunday and no one was there) until he finally lost control in a turn and fishtailed into the side of the building. He then laid a guilt trip on good kid, telling him all about how his grandmother was dying and he is the only one supporting her and how his family would be homeless if he lost his job. They walked back to the dealership and the jerk convinced the good kid not to tell anyone.
A couple hours later, someone driving by noticed a running Corvette with the front end all messed up and sideways in a parking lot, so they called the cops, who figure out where the car belongs. The dealership manager didn’t believe the cops at first but eventually agreed to go check it out. His jaw dropped when he got there. The Corvette had just sold that afternoon but hadn’t been picked up by the customer yet.
Two cops showed up at the dealership and started poking around. The good kid immediately had an attack of conscience and told his boss and the cops what happened. His boss tried to find the jerk and discovered that, without telling the good kid (who he had just guilt tripped like crazy into silence), he’d immediately gone home after the wreck, telling the manager he needed to take his grandmother to the hospital. He’d just disappeared without telling the good kid. He lived with grandma, but she was completely fine and not dying.
The cops found video proving the good kid was telling the truth and went to the jerk’s house. The jerk lied and told them that it was the good kid who took the car and wrecked it, that he wasn’t even around when it happened. Then the jerk was arrested and fired.
It would take five pages to type the full story up, so in this abbreviated version, I can’t begin to describe how much of a narcissistic, manipulative, chronic liar the jerk is. The good kid was physically sick with guilt over his couple hours of silence, but being young and naive, he was played like a fiddle by the little jerk.”
She Never Expected To Have To Breathalyze An Employee
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“I managed a long-term care facility. I got a call one night from a resident telling me that the new nighttime worker was acting weird. This was at about midnight and the shift had only started at 11. I called my lead (there were three people on duty) and asked how the night was going. She told me, ‘Sally is sick.’ Hm. I put on my shoes and headed in. Now, having the administrator show up at almost 1 am is never a good thing, so I’m pretty sure all three of them felt scared when I showed up. I took one look at ‘Sally,’ who was leaning against the wall and asked her to come into my office.
I asked her if she had been drinking. ‘I never drink at work,’ she slurred at me. I told her I had to have her blow into this tube. We had breathalyzer tubes that registered if they read over a specific level. The crystals changed from clear to dark blue if it registered over the legal limit. No surprise, it turned dark blue. I asked her again if she had been drinking. She admitted that she’d been drinking earlier in the evening. She and her friend had been doing shots up until about 10 pm. ‘But I’m not wasted! I stopped and ate almost two hours ago so it’s all out of my system.’
Nope. Doesn’t work that way. ‘Sorry Sally, but I need to let you go. Call someone to come get you,’ I told her as I was filling out paperwork for the breathalyzer usage and final check request.
‘Oh, that’s ok. I drove in.’ Nope, nope, nope. She then asked what time she should come in tomorrow.
‘Sally, you no longer work here. Coming to work hammered is not tolerated.’
‘Oh. Really?’
‘Yes. Really. Please call someone, who has not been drinking, to come get you.’
She called about 16 hours later asking me for her next week’s schedule. She didn’t remember being at work or getting fired.”
Even When He Was Being Disciplined, He Couldn’t Keep Off His Phone
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“I was disciplining an employee because he had been seen multiple times on his phone, texting and surfing the web etc. So I was just giving him a verbal warning in my office and all of a sudden his phone buzzed. He pulled it out and started texting back whoever just texted him. I looked at him confused and asked him if it was business related. He replied, ‘No.’
So I actually started laughing and said, ‘Are you kidding me? You’re seriously on your phone, in my office, after I just told you that you can’t use your phone for personal reasons while on the clock?’
He replied, ‘So are you just going to effing fire me?’
To which I said, ‘Yes, I am now. You’ve given me a reason to.’ He was fired right there on the spot.
This guy seriously gave 0 care. He had very little going for him. He had no education, no drive, no ambition and no future plans. He was 25, lived with his parents and had a resume full of entry-level jobs. He wasn’t stupid, he wasn’t socially awkward, he just seemed like he didn’t care about life. He was lazy and pretty disrespectful to others. I was quite glad that my verbal warning was escalated to me firing him.”
No One Could Believe He’d Do That In The Trailer
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“I was a manager at a landscaping company. We had enclosed trailers on all the trucks. I once had to fire an employee who routinely pooped in bags in the back of the trailer. He kept toilet paper in the truck. This wasn’t IBS, he had a drinking problem and would have the squirts all day.
I wrote him up a couple times after the coworkers complained about the poo bags. Those were the most uncomfortable meetings ever. I had to fire him as it continued and he started throwing them out in convenience store garbage cans in the middle of the summer.”
It Took A While For His Time Clock Fraud To Come To The Light
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“We keep sign-in sheets next to the time clock as a backup. You write down what times you clock in and out. And if the time clock doesn’t work, or you forget your ID to swipe, we can still pay you.
This kid would write down his scheduled out time, write ‘swipe not working’ and leave an hour before his shift was over.
One day, I went looking for him close to the end of his shift to ask if he wanted to stay late. He wasn’t where he usually worked, so I looked all over the building, then went to the time clock, thinking maybe another manager let him leave early. Nope, that’s when I noticed he had already written a future time off. The next stop was to security to check the cameras.
Next day, the kid was fired.”
He Forgot Who His Drinking Buddy Was The Night Before
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“I had a young guy that came out drinking with me the night before. He didn’t turn up the next day and when I finally got hold of him, he said his aunt had died and he was at the funeral.
He’d forgotten that we’d been out together the previous night.
Unfortunately, it was his third strike.
He’s a nice, but dim, young man.”
He Really Thought He Was Pulling A Fast One On Them
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“We were an employee’s ‘second job’ (not a good idea, by the way) and occasionally he supposedly had valid reasons for why he couldn’t get to work that night. These reasons were usually as follows: ‘My job sent me to a town over for something and I won’t be back for several more hours,’ All plausible because he worked for a large furniture company in the area, so we made it work to the best of our ability.
One day, he was scheduled to be in, but he didn’t show. Another manager and I called and texted him, all without reply. About 30 minutes into his shift, he texted me that he wasn’t supposed to be scheduled because he was out of town doing something for his first job.
A little later, an employee saw him texting another employee telling them he lied and actually just didn’t want to come in.
Stupid.
Another time, when I had just got my first job, a coworker of mine stole some product literally RIGHT IN FRONT of a manager and then proceeded to attempt to lie his way out of it. So dumb, so stupid and completely hilarious.”
She Thought She Couldn’t Be Disciplined Because She Was The “Token Woman”
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“I worked for my father through college and grad school as a weld and machine shop lead. We had a female welder who thought she was above the rules because she was the token woman. She was constantly on her phone, in the special office bathroom that only she could use, always talking and starting verbal altercations with other people in the plant. It was well documented that she was underperforming and I followed all of the HR protocol in warning her. I’d pulled her into the office with an HR rep and gave her the fairest employee evaluation that I could. She thought it was a betrayal of ‘our friendship’ to act like ‘her boss,’ which I was. One day, I asked her to do a simple task and instead of doing it, she threw a fit, literally crapped on the floor of the bathroom, walked out early after clocking out, and never showed back up. So, we canned her.”
Specialist Idiot Thought He Could Get Away With Stealing Sensitive Military Equipment
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“This was the US Army, 2013, Afghanistan. His name was Specialist Idiot. Idiot didn’t know how to do his own laundry or shower, at 26 years old, he had to be shown, repeatedly. Idiot was our supply Soldier for 90% of our deployment, we had to deploy without a Supply Sergeant because of a last-minute medical condition. Somewhere along the way, Specialist Idiot discovered that we had a $30,000+ thermal vision system that wasn’t on anybody’s property books. Specialist Idiot decided to hide this from everybody instead of reporting it like he was supposed to.
Specialist Idiot managed to break down the kit and smuggled the components back to the US in different bags and boxes. Specialist Idiot decided to sell this extremely expensive and sensitive piece of military equipment for $400 on the base Craigslist site. Specialist Idiot got caught after he sold it, the buyer could not be tracked down. Specialist Idiot was convicted at a Court Marshall, sent to military jail, and received a dishonorable discharge. Specialist Idiot is, to this day, the single dumbest person I have ever had to work with. In Specialist Idiot’s defense, we had planned to have him evaluated to determine if he was mentally challenged as he had all the warning flags for it.”
When Fun And Games Go Way Too Far
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“We had an employee get taped to a chair and left in a back room. He couldn’t reach his phone but got Siri to dial 911 for him. The police showed up and the owner was furious. They found him and un-taped him. The employees who did it were fired on the spot and one was arrested. The tape guy was up in HR for over four hours before they settled on enough money to make him shut up. It was an insane day.”
Their Test Drive Didn’t Go As Planned
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“Back in my days working at a used car dealership, we had a teen come in and test drive a 1,500 (mile) Corvette
The kid drove it around our set loop once and was being a little waffley on if he wanted to get it or not. He said it didn’t really drive as well as he thought it would.
My salesman told him it was user error and he’d prove it to him. So they went out for another drive, with the employee driving it this time, and on the street instead of our set loop.
He managed to get pulled over doing 135 MPH in a school zone and got arrested. Needless to say, he was not welcome back at our store. However, the teen did buy the car.”
He Really Made Himself At Home
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“We once had a man who was discovered sleeping back in our shipping warehouse each night. No one was quite sure what was going on before then, but he always seemed to be at work, even when his shift had ended.
One night, our managers decided to look around and found him in a box fort of sorts, passed out, wasted and naked. They had to basically kick him to wake him up and told him he was fired and he had to leave.”
He Absolutely Knew Better
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“An engineer who worked under me releasing nearly 80KG of an old refrigerant called R22 into the atmosphere, which is completely against good practice and highly illegal considering it’s an HCFC. Not to mention, this was a commercial business, in central London. He was fired by myself and I believe the directors I worked for reported him to the relevant associations/government divisions for the act. It seems silly, but this was a trained air conditioning/refrigeration engineer and this refrigerant is very damaging to the environment.”
He Tried To Give His Friend A Boost, But His Friend Just Dragged Him Down
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“My friend and next door neighbor wanted to leave his iHop job but had no back-up. I decided to hire him on at my own business for a couple dollars more an hour than he was previously making. He had been falling into a deep depression and drinking a lot, so I thought I could help him get his life back on track with a bit of extra cash. The first week was fine, but when he started to not wake up for work on time or answer his door, I was forced to go to his back door and knock on his room window to wake him up. Since the company was appointment only and we dealt with personal vehicles, being late was a big problem. I politely warned him that he couldn’t do that and continue to work here. The problem persisted and I had to let my friend and neighbor go.
He is now heavily into smack and crystal and can’t find a job. It’s seriously the most heartbreaking thing to know that you gave a ton of effort to help a friend only to have him be a crap employee.
This is why they say to never hire friends.”