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  • I worked in a restaurant. I spat in the trashcan in the kitchen right by the food line. I bummed cigarettes from customers. I also worked my ass off, working doubles or picking up shifts, because combination of 0 money and just my general nature. I practically knocked down a waitress one time just because I was sort of rushing around not looking where I was going. I stole food sometimes. I was a menace. I frequently called out. I was the only white guy who would work busing or dish room without whining about it, and also I would genuinely try to do a good job. The managers were sort of evenly divided with most slightly in favor of me and some with intense bad feelings about me, but in general I was perpetually semi-close to getting fired. Eventually, I quit because too dysfunctional and was moving to another city, and was too generally disorganized to even pick up my last check for some reason.

    I also hated waiting tables because of dealing with customers, and would try to avoid it in favor of even other less valued positions when I could afford to.

    Does that count?

    • Dish dog is one of the easiest jobs. Worked several kitchen jobs in restaurants ranging from denny's-like, **** to fine catering. Cratering kitchen work was by far my favorite. Next favorite was dish dogging in a ****. They all loved me and I kicked ass. Bartender kept my whisky glass full all night.

      Barbacked a massive wedding in malibu. There were 5 different bars I had to keep stalked. They were all pretty far apart. Was originally hired as server. They asked the servers to move a bunch of alcohol. All the other servers decided it wasn't their job and went and hid. I moved fuck loads of case's of liquor and beer, alone. Then they needed help in the kitchen prepping. I volunteered. Went to the kitchen and sliced lemons and veg with a dull knife. The only extra knife they had that was Kosher. Loved that part. Chatted away with the latinos with my shitty broken-spanish. Guero, rapido! They loved that they had their own white boy dressed in expensive clothes, tie tucked in between his buttons putting on an apron to jokingly boss around. I think they really liked the fact that I didn't think I was better than them or above the work.

      The head of that catering wanted to hire me full time when the night was over. He was really impressed. I said yes till I got my check.

      Was hired with them telling me I was making 18/hour. They paid me 10/hour. When the called me for the next gig I told them to eat a bag of dicks!

      I have to agree, the worst is serving. That shit sucks ass.

      • Yeah, dealing with people is the absolute worst. Just put me in the back with people who are working for a living. Just way better.

        I forgot this one: One of the customers said she loved our house-made whatever dip. I said no, it comes from a tub. She said no, it's definitely house made, it's so good. I went to the back and got one of the tubs to show her where it came from.

        There's a reason some of the managers hated me 😃

  • I was almost fired when I worked as a parking lot attendant.

    How the process worked is, the lot served a community college and there was only one way in the parking lot. It was a flat rate, so the customer would pay the 2 bucks (or whatever it was) I would hand them a sequentially numbered ticket that they would put on their dash and they would park.

    At the end of the shift I would fill out a deposit slip that had a entry for what ticket number I started with and what ticket number I ended with and I put all the cash and that slip in a plastic bag that would seal up and I would deposit it in the bank. Typically the daily deposit amount would be around 350 bucks.

    Well one day the boss calls me and says that they can’t find a deposit and I have to come in and explain why. I went in and told them that I made the deposit at the end of yesterday’s shift.

    I get suspended.

    About a week later the boss calls me and says the bank found the deposit and my suspension is over. I had already found another job so I just told him that I am resigning.

    What to know the really fucking up part? Every now and then a driver would give me back the ticket as they left the parking lot. I would just throw it in the trash. Well one day a driver handed me his ticket as he was leaving, and another driver was coming in so, I just reused the ticket.

    You see what is coming, don’t you? I started making a point of reusing tickets and keeping the two bucks. I would STEAL the money. I would steal odd amounts, 16 bucks one day, 22 bucks the next day.

    I figure I must have stolen at least 1000 bucks from that place when it was all said and done.

  • They had to cut down the company from 15 to 8 employees due to a big client leaving.
    I was one of those seven that needed to go. But one of those that got to stay had a year long sabbatical planned and decided to take it earlier. This allowed me to stay, but I only got to hear this about a week or two before I had to go.

    I already had some second job interviews planned and attended these anyway for fun. I wasn’t rude, but definitely a lot more casual than your usual applicant :)

  • Probably lots of times that I wasn't aware of.

    Once I got a disciplinary and six month "probation" for taking a day off that hadn't been approved. I'm not sure what I expected to happen, but I did it anyway because the a-hole who denied it took such pleasure in the denial that I absolutely had to take the day off anyway just to spite him. Frankly, he's lucky he was 1) bigger than me and 2) I'm not predisposed to violence. That smirk was an open invitation.

    There was also the time I remember the boss of the company I was working for at the time coming into the room I was working in, standing there for a bit and then walking out. I'd thought it was weird at the time, but later heard that he'd been planning to fire me but saw me hard at work and chickened out. He later made me redundant, which I don't think was a surprise to anyone but me. He's a millionaire running a large US company now. Funny to think about really.

    Sometimes you think you're introspective until you realise there's a whole bunch of things you've totally been missing or not facing. In my case, mental health. Looking back at the way I worked in all the jobs I had before I had to quit, I can see what I was doing in order to continue to function totally rubbed people the wrong way, even when it wasn't the overt, angry nonsense I started doing towards the end.

  • I got fired from my first job. It started at 4am, and I'm a heavy sleeper, I came in too late too many times. But I was also the best at it, and I was unfired by the end of the day.

  • I was working at Payless shoes over a decade ago when this happened. I was brought in from a different store because turn over was so high at our downtown location. Everything was ok for a month or two then my till was short. That had never happened to me before, but apparently I had "miscounted" the coins at close. Never happened to me before but we are all human, maybe I made a mistake.

    Next day I close and again my till was short according to the manager. There was 1 problem, just to show that it wasn't me slaking I had sent pictures in of my count and the log sheets to the district manager just to cover my ass. Manager wouldn't hear me out and took me off the schedule for the week.

    I used what would have been my shift to hand out résumés. I was immediately hired next door at a different retail store. I walk 1 door down and tell manager I quit.

    Now the fun bit comes in. Turns out I wasn't short on my till. The manager was running a scam to keep his store numbers up and to skim some off the top as well. He would "buy" small items on his credit card and then reverse the charge on the credit card machine. So it looked like he was selling things, but he wasn't. Even worse he would return these on later dates so he would get the refund money.

    He would cover it up by claiming he had an employee theft problem/employee incompetence problem. If an employee stayed to long/annoyed him/got to close to figuring him out he would make them short on till on their shift like he did with me/something similar just to get them fired. He was caught partially because I sent in photo proof that something weird was happening.

  • Once as a teen I forgot I had an extra Sunday opening shift I had volunteered for at a pizza shop I worked part time at. I was passed out at a LAN party after playing Quake 3/SWAT 4 into the early AM hours with the boys when I got an upset voice mail from my boss who said not to show up if i was more than 2 hours late. I asked my dad what to do, and he just told me to show up anyways and try to apologize. tbf I hadn't no-showed before and I guess boss felt like he had over reacted. I got a 25 cents per hour raise that day.

    Other time was layoffs at my 11 year long career now, I had been there for 4 years at the time. Union dictated layoffs went by seniority. I was above 1 other person before the hire date cut off. Phew. We're doing better these days and a lot of people got hired back eventually.

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