Why did you get fired?

I applied for a warehouse job and the interviewer loved me and my resume and said I was hired, I just had to fill out a basic literacy test. I was studying at university so it was a silly thing to ask but he said it's just a formality; they have to do it.

One question said "describe yourself in three sentences". I wrote something like "I am very punctual. I enjoy stacking boxes. I'm a self starter. I always do more than asked." Get it? It's four sentences but they asked for three. The fourth one being about doing more than asked. Funny right?? Yeah the interviewer called me back saying head office didn't find it funny and I was disqualified for failing the literacy test.

I figured I dodged a bullet because it must suck to work for a bunch of people without a sense of humour!

I refused to return to office.

I shit all over the manager (figuratively) in front of everybody after one of their outbursts.

Full disclosure: This was at a fast food restaurant I applied for a job at with the intent of fucking with 2 of the shittiest managers I've ever witnessed after stopping for a burger one time. Did it on a whim and it was quite a bit of fun. 10/10, would recommend. Plus, I got paid to do it.

I told my boss that I was going to have to reduce my hours back to weekends only because college was starting back up again which meant I couldn't do week day shifts, so they put me down for two mid week shifts and didn't tell me about them, then they used that as an excuse to fire me.

Not actually fired, but I just resigned from a relatively high paying career position without something lined up.

I work in tech, and some parts of that market are very much in flux due to AI disruption. For this company it led to a shuffle and, in my opinion, a lot of people ending up in roles they shouldn't be in.

A few things happened during that shuffle. First, I was overlooked for a promotion that otherwise seemed in the bag (to the point where others were equally confused). Ultimately the person who ended up as my boss really should not be where they are. They don't understand the business and started making other bad decisions without even consulting the team of experts on hand. In fact, they apologized to me for "starting off on the wrong foot", but the damage was largely done, and they kept making really bad calls anyway -- calls which put the team constantly at risk and kept things very inefficient.

And yes, of course they are good friends with the new CEO.

That exacerbated a lot of issues we already had with constantly juggling tasks and chronic understaffing. After that promotion snub, plus being one of the few really holding things together anyway, I realized that the stress of the position entirely outweighed the stress of finding another job. Obviously I also felt like upward mobility was no longer a thing. I was dreading work every morning. I started to get really bad anxiety. I wanted to find something else, but my mental state was such that I didn't have the drive to seek alternatives or interview while also working at this place. I asked to reduce my weekly workload for a while, and when it wasn't working too well, I asked to go on leave to try and combat the burnout. New boss was instantly waffling on approval, so I felt I had no other realistic option but resignation.

My wife and I are in a pretty secure financial position, and she's got her own job that is going well. It is the first time in my life I have resigned from a position without anything lined up, which admittedly does feel weird. Taking some time for better mental health, then to hone a few skills, then will be returning to market.

I had a panic attack at work and a coworker heard me cursing through tears.

In fairness, I'm sure hearing variations on "fuck damn ass piss shit fuck fuck" over and over was annoying.

Took too much unlimited PTO. All of it approved too. Idk.

Bug in the new point-of-sale software that the managers couldn't fix caused a small (under $200) sale to not process correctly. Was terminated for money mismanagement. Mgmt was so incompetent that they lost one of their best sellers, and ended up paying me unemployment through the lockdown because they couldn't defend the termination to the unemployment office.

I finally made a vague comment pushing back against my boss's fucking unhinged conspiracy theories and shitty beliefs after being forced to hear him spout it for nearly a year.

"Wow, Wayne. I thought you were against the government regulating what people should do with their bodies. Huh.. but okay."

He turned purple, didn't talk to me for the rest of the day, and never put me on the schedule after that.

Their entire business closed down a few months ago. I feel bad for were the ladies working there & my one co-worker. They were all part of the same church/religion, and they all basically cowered before Wayne. Wayne was an asshole who treated them all terribly. He was just mad that I didn't let him treat me the same way.

They also didn't want to give me more than 18 hours per week or raise my pay up from 12$ an hour for the highly specialized job I was doing.

Good riddance, Wayne.

I started a job at a regional bank on a team that was responsible for integrating the data from newly acquired banks into their systems. The team was overworked and definitely needed more hands on deck, but they didn't have time to train anybody new on the process. Aside from that, the organization of the team was pretty poor.

When I started, they seemed unaware that I was supposed to be starting that day, so they didn't have a desk or anything ready for me. So that first day was a bit of a wash. The second day, they put me at a desk on the floor above the rest of my team. That was also the only time that I met the manager who hired me. It seemed like people mostly forgot about me because I didn't really get any work assigned until a couple weeks in.

They wanted me to make one of their mapping documents (which appeared to be a SQL statement copied into a Word document with every detail meticulously documented across twenty pages). I didn't have any idea where to start with it. The next day, they said that there is no way I could do that without training, so they took the assignment away. Over the next couple of months, I'd bring up that I didn't have anything to work on at every morning meeting. But other than that, I just spent my day editing Wikipedia articles.

Eventually they keyed in on the fact that they were paying me $90k per year to do nothing, so they fired me. They said it was probably their fault for hiring somebody without banking experience. I don't think banking experience would have helped.

Oh yeah, and the meeting where I was fired was also where I found out that the person firing me was my team lead.

I once was working as an apartment maintenance guy for a property in Colorado. During the interview I made it clear that I wasn't looking to move into a high responsibility role immediately and that I wanted to spend some time familiarizing myself with some more specific types of repair before going into any sort of management track. The interviewer seemed to like that answer given my previous experience and resume and I was hired.

A few months later, I made a mistake because I was asked to take a tech from the local utility around to every single unit on the property. Originally the property manager told me I'd have three days to do the work, but I was pressured to do it faster so that the tech could make a flight to his next job. We were installing batteries in water meters, which required the unlocking and opening of water heater closets on resident balconies. The residents did not have a key to their closet and were not allowed access. The closets did not use doorknobs either. They were held shut by the deadbolt locks. That night a storm rolled in. The resident called the on call service complaining that the wind was blowing the door open, but the on-call tech told them to put something in front of the door to keep it shut and that we would be by in the morning to lock the deadbolt. They didn't do as they were asked and their pipes froze, causing a flood in the unit below them.

Later that day, I was asked to hand over my keys. As I was getting them detached from my personal keys, the property manager told me that she felt that she was "sold a bill of goods" that I hadn't lived up to and that she had hired me because i had looked like "management track material." I told her that in the interview with the maintenance manager I said that I wanted a learning experience and that I wasn't ready for management. I told them I had never lied to them and left the property.

A week later I had applied for and was interviewing for a new job at another property. My phone rang during the interview. I silenced it and apologized to the interviewer but carried on. After the interview I listened to the voicemail that my old boss had left. "When we offered you the job I had you mixed up with someone else. We hired the wrong person."

The owner was an alcoholic. Her husband sent her to rehab. She came back hating men (both me and her husband). My wife worked for them at the time and we were getting a divorce. She fired me and kept my wife on the payroll

Refused to turn up to an unpaid yet compulsory training session while on my probation period. I think I dodged a bullet.

If it happens, it will be because of ADHD

I once was fired for being a top performer but being a contractor. Me and another guy were doing 45% of all the IT help desk work for a top American insurance company. Then one day th company that employed us had their contract terminated. This means that we were asked to leave. In the exit interview I asked if it was performance based, because I felt we did most of the work, they complemented my performance and even noticed that I was the best at making coffee but they had to start making better financial choices and we were welcome to apply for full time work with the company.

Funny how it worked out because the next job was the one that really put me into the career position.

So I have to say that sometimes bad things happen when it's not your fault but it can be a blessing in disguise. You might be opening a door to something better.

A decade ago working at a retail store. My manager told me in a private meeting that i was expendable and he would fire me for any excuse. It's not like i even did anything, it was just pure, spiteful power tripping. Later on i was removed about what an asshole he is to some coworkers, and mimed him sucking the owner's dick. I think one of my coworkers was sleeping with him, and i guess she told him. He was crying when he fired me. I feel a little bad, but also fuck that guy.

First job I wasn't experienced enough (kitchen porter at a busy restaurant).

Next and last one my coworker was going to sue the boss for sexual assault and part of the crew including her were planning on suing for laboral exploitation (false contracts, unpaid hours, etc). The boss heard about it and fired us and threatened to sue us for bullshit (for staying after closing drinking, it was a pub so is something normal and some coworkers that were there but didn't want to sue didn't have any problem).

Technically, I was laid off and not fired, but here's what happened: I intended to take five weeks of unpaid COVID leave in 2020 so that I could handle childcare until my wife's Summer break started, but they laid me off two weeks in. I guess I just made myself an easy target. Fortunately, a previous employer hired me back within a few weeks, fully remote.

My best firing was from a job I got hired for at 16. Seasonal help for Victoria’s Secret in a local mall. This seems like a random detail, but makes the firing even funnier to me: VS (at least, this one) was bisected into the lingerie half of the store and the perfume/cosmetics half of the store. I was hired to work the perfume counter.

It was their holiday hiring push, so myself and a half dozen other women or so came in for a full day of group training—like get there ass early for hours of dumb safety/theft videos, paperwork, mock customer interactions & sales transactions on the POS, etc.

We finish all this up, and the trainer is congratulating us for being done as one of the managers is arriving for her shift. The trainer encourages us to introduce ourselves to the manager and each other & releases us for the day. I wasn’t shy, and was the first one to shake manager’s hand. She makes small talk and asks what scheduling preferences I had submitted. In response, I mentioned something about classes and she asks what college I go to.

When I laugh and correct her with the name of my high school, her face changes and she asks my age. “Oh, uhhh you can’t work here.” I am confused and tell her that I listed my correct information on the application. “Yeah, sorry, someone made a mistake. We only hire 18+ employees.”

To work the perfume counter. In a panties store. Meanwhile, 2023 me likes to periodically glance at Target’s growing sex toy selection (that is presumably stocked/rung up/at least VIEWED by minor employees) because it still feels novel. Victoria still had to mail me a check for training hours and can go fuck herself 😂

I was fired for "fraternisation in the workplace". Teenage me was caught snogging the boss's daughter, no less, in the stock area by said boss. Cue "get your hands off my daughter" (he didn't know we were dating) and a meeting later that day being told much more calmly I was being let go for fraternisation. I said it was unfair because he kissed his wife in front of us the previous week, and he said "not that way," and he had a point, but it was still obviously unfair.

Anyway, we started deliberately dating in secret instead of her just not really telling him, and when she rang me she always called me Samantha, which I then used to find exciting (Freud eat your heart out).

I'm convinced that she found it exciting to be disobeying her dad, and would complain to me about her dad saying something like "he's just trying to take advantage of you" and we would reassure each other that I wasn't but she would be much keener those days, it felt like.

When you're a teenager and you find a magic button that gets you nice things, you don't hold back on pressing the button, so if she got a bit unenthusiastic about meeting up, I'd just ring her at home knowing full well that her dad would shout at me if he answered and her mum would quietly also refuse to put me through but tell her to stop me from ringing because it might upset her dad. She'd argue with her parents and get revenge by seeing me and behaving in a manner she new her parents to find improper.

It was really fun while it lasted, but in the end I felt like I shouldn't have to provoke her dad to get with her and stopped doing it. We drifted apart, I don't know whether her heart wasn't in it when she wasn't cross with her dad or I just started worrying about that too much, but I'm pretty sure her dad had been my unintentional wing man all those months. I really think it's properly messed up.

She later dated a guy who I think really was trying to take advantage of her. Also messed up.

Anyway, I got a job at the big chain version of his store and of course she and her friends started shopping there, which resulted in more arguments with her dad.

I guess the moral of the story is make sure you're on good terms with your teenage daughter or she might just go against everything you said just to spite you.

I have a bad case of Resting removed Face and I got fired from my barista job at Starbucks for not smiling enough and because I apparently "always looked like I wasn't enjoying myself" while at work.

My "default" settings face just looks serious, sorry, I can't help it.

The head of the chemistry dept didnt like me and my boss got sick of being told that it was illegal to have the hazardous waste on site more than a year and that the hazardous waste company should probably be sent out to deal with it so they compiled a list of things about me that annoyed them (nitpicking) until they were satisfied that they could fire me without consequence.

I got unemployment and wanted to leave for another job anyway so the joke is on them.

I got fired for not arranging the tshirts at Spencer's. No one told me they were moving me from poster to t-shirt duty.

One of the many jobs I had in the past involved such gross violations of health and safety codes that my own immediate boss threatened to write me up on the first day because I was "going too slow" and actually following safety procedures. He demonstrated the "correct" way to do the job (blatantly skipping the safety procedures that I had just learned in training all the while) and said I needed to reconsider my priorities or quit.

I quit.

The job was at a hospital. I was working with contact hazard and breathing hazard critical care patients.

company was a start up and they didn't find any funds for 2023. the option was, work for free / "stocks" or be fired.

at least i'm getting unemployment.

And I quote “I’m going to do you a favor. You’re just too smart. I’m letting you go.” This was like the 3rd day.

I needed a job, any job, so I took a position below my experience level at the time. I wasn’t very happy about it. Like I said, I needed the job.

Company went through my email and saw that I was applying for a job at a different place. Fair enough I guess, dumb move on my part to use company email. I did get the other job though, so it worked out.

In high school I worked in a call center doing telemarket research. They would monitor phone calls and your typing and grade you on if you entered stuff verbatim. I'd get in trouble a lot for using contractions when the person didn't and small stuff like that. I'm sure there was some reason for needing to be precise but it was never explained. Oh well. I put up with it because it paid well 15 bucks an hour when minimum wage was 6 something and hours were 6 to 10 so people could work it as a second job.

Anyway it was senior year and I had a lot going on. Internship from 6am to 10am. School from 11am to 3pm then work 6pm to 10pm. Well I ended up getting some really nasty flu or something in February and my internship gave me the week I was sick off and the week after since we worked with primates and I may have been contagious. Work didn't believe me but I literally had no voice and could only whisper, no way was I talking on the phone for 4 hours a night. But I begged and pleaded and they let me come back a few weeks later.

Well a week or two after getting better my grandfather ended up passing away. I just needed my Friday and Saturday shifts off at work and internship to drive up for the funeral. My internship gave me the week off anyways. The bosses at work called me in and told me they didn't believe me thought I'd been lying about everything the past few months and told me to shape up or ship out. I chose to ship out.

They ended up calling me a week later and asking me to come but I'd had enough.

The latest supervisor was a devout catholic with literally 12 children, and he found out that the time off I'd taken was to get a vasectomy.

I could have pushed the issue and very likely could have kept my job but... we kept getting fewer contracts, there was drama between C-level people, and Mr. Catholic was the 3rd boss in 8 months. I had a new job two days later, working for a place that isn't so obviously circling the drain.

Union organizing

Panera overnight baker. I got hired as a warm body to stop them from having to fly someone in and put them up in a hotel. I did not have any relevant qualifications. My training was rushed and done by someone who wasn’t qualified to train me. Then when I was doing the job too slowly, they decided it was cheaper to bring someone in than to keep paying me overtime. I almost cried. I’d never made more than $10 an hour prior to that job, so I thought I was making good money. I wasn’t. Panera and their overpriced shit can eat my whole ass.

For my first job I worked at a rural gas station pumping gas. It was a full service gas station which was rare in my area. I mean, it still is, but it was back then too. Anyway, I was only 15 at the time, which was technically underage, but I was paid under the table anyway. My sister worked as a cashier at that gas station and was the one who got me the job. I mostly worked when she did, though I would work with other cashiers on occasion. My sister ended up getting another job and basically ghosted the gas station. The owner basically fired me because of this, he didn't want any other family members working for him. I don't think he ever liked me to begin with, so I think it was just an excuse to get rid of me. He was in the process of selling the store anyway, which happened not long after I got fired, so I would've lost the job anyway.

I got fired from my role at the orange juice factory.

I couldn't concentrate.

Failure to show up. I got a job out of the city that would put me up for the summer and straight up forgot to tell my boss. Should have paid me better if you didn't want me to leave

I've always managed to leave my career jobs before shit hit the fan, but I did get asked to not come back to one of my college tutoring gigs because I told the kid's dad I didn't like the IP phones he had installed on campus.

Because I kept printing t-shirts and cups upsidedown

Help desk for a tech company (hourly, not salary). They wanted me to be on the on call rotation for systems I wasn’t qualified to oversee, and not pay me extra during the on call shifts. It was at that moment I stopped giving a fuck about that job and productivity and project completion both dropped off. Was justifiably fired a few months later.

Never ever work for a company for free.

I merged in an average of 1 PR every 2 weeks

Because the owner had lent fruit to his sons failed smoothie business that was several hundred thousands in debt.

I got hired the next day in his wifes business. Doing the exact same thing. Missed a month of pay. Dumb pig

I just got fired mainly because of shortage of work but also because of concentration disorders and not ending errors in my work due to my depression/ptsd... Feels weird...

End of April this year, literally asked another teams manager if they needed help but I didn’t want to handle users if they could help it. They took it the wrong way (???) and their manager brought in my manager and I was termed for being “unprofessional”. Almost 6 years with this org. New job is so much better with a pay bump on top of it.