I want to hear your (preferably real) reasons you got fired.
Took 6 days vacation instead of 5 I had “accrued”. I didn’t get paid for vacation in any case. I was working in construction. Company folded a year later; I can’t think why.
The other reason was “insubordination”. Can’t get into that with out sharing too much, but Texans are a special type of ignorant.
I did a good job preparing for Y2K. So good that they outsourced all IT once it was clear that we were successful.
Another time I made the mistake of getting paid what I was worth. They found a new guy to do the same for much less. He left within 6 months for a job that paid a reasonable amount.
I’m a helicopter mechanic. I started a turbine helicopter engine to prove an entire shift of mechanics, quality assurance (“subject matter experts”) and managers they’re dumb. Then wrote a mean pass down insulting all of them, highlighting how many man hours, our time they’ve wasted, and how they made us all look stupid in front of the customer (US Marines.)
At the time I was the night shift QA. I got to work and they told me we’d be replacing an engine that was bad, it wouldn’t start (they left the ignition circuit breaker in, so no spark) but worse it was now leaking out of the thermocouples.
I says, you flooded the engine; there’s not supposed to be liquid fuel in that section. If you followed the procedures in our manuals you’d know how to blow the engine out to dry it then it would start.
They’d already called the higher level engine maintenance squadron to confirm the engine was bad. I was talking to the site lead, Dave, I bet him a dollar I could start that engine. At the time I was the only person on the site with an engine turn certification. He says alright, try it.
The Marines were already there. They determined nothing was wrong with the engine. I said, since you’re here want to watch me light it off. They said yeah. I went through the flooded engine start and it started and ran up perfect.
Next day I come in and Dave tells me I’ve been fired. There was one sentence in our rules that said only pilots could start engines. BUT Dave went to bat for me, explained the situation including that they certified me to run engines. He got it turned into two week suspension and a demotion, but I had so much PTO saved up he was going to pay me during it.
I came back and was now just a mechanic. Which was alright since I never liked the rest of the QA department. I got less responsibility, got to listen to audio books and ding wrenches together. Every now and then the other QA inspectors and managers would come to me with questions and I’d get to say, “I’m sorry, I’m not paid enough to know that.”
I got fired from Starbucks for not smiling enough back in the late 90s. To be fair, I have a pretty bad case of Resting Bitch Face, so I get it.
Because I made the mistake of saying over IM that my team lead at the call center was going to make me have a breakdown.
Apparently, the last guy who that team lead pushed to the edge made some actionable threats, and because I expressed how his harassment was effecting me I was fired.
The team lead was a loyal slave. He used to be a bouncer so he thanked boss and god for his new job, and doesn’t even realize he’s still at the bottom of the pyramid. -_-
Not organizing the t-shirts even though no one told me to organize the t-shirts.
I’ve never been fired. I honestly don’t know how people do it. Boss says “do X”, you do X with a smile, whether you like it or not. If you don’t like it, you start applying to other jobs while keeping your paycheck. Then leave, shake your boss’s hand and say it was great working with them (even if they were a POS), and forget about the whole mess with your new, higher paycheck.
I feel like these are kindergarden level skills. Follow instructions. Hide your emotions. Don’t let authority figures know you hate them as long as they have power over you. It’s not that complicated.
This reads like you’ve only ever had to deal with mid-tier bosses, so your reference for a “bad” boss is pretty skewed.
I know one dude whose boss demanded he climb through a full dumpster to retrieve something the boss had thrown away earlier that day. The boss also required him to be clocked out for it, because he was already capped on hours for the week. The dumpster was shared by a seafood restaurant and a frozen yogurt place, so it was full of rotting fish and spoiled dairy.
Boss said he was fired if he refused. He refused, and was fired. Every single sentence in the previous paragraph violated existing labor laws. But sure, “just do as you’re told with a smile, whether you like it or not.”
This doesn’t sound like a post an adult with actual life experience would make. What grade are you in?
Mid 1970s, I was 18 years old and driving a Pepsi delivery truck, fully loaded. Three-on-the-tree transmission and tarps over the truck’s loading bays.
Made a left turn too quickly and too sharply, and dumped 200 cases of cans all over the road.
That was it for my pop delivery career.Looked like it popped off quickly but fizzed out in the end.
And hence, canned.
Not following new RTO for a cloud based software company with no onprem infrastructure to manage, as the IT support after covid was deemed over.
Not the same, but as a consultant, used to fire clients all the time. Very satisfying.
Hell yeah living my dream. What would you fire them for? Any patterns?
Most often because management wouldn’t hold up their end of the deal. They wanted to stick to a hard timeline, but wouldn’t approve a milestone or sit on a decision for days and weeks. That would cascade down and stress everyone out later. Deadlines work both ways.
Another one was not making people who had special knowledge available. Or those people would drag their feet because they were busy elsewhere.
Best solution was to have someone in upper management as a ‘sponsor.’ If things didn’t happen on time you told them about the schedule impact without throwing anyone under the bus. Funny how things would start happening.
One of my first jobs, I wanted to take off for my birthday (I was young and cared about birthdays then). I did it well in advance and followed proper procedure, but my manager told me last minute that I couldn’t have it off because he was going on vacation. I told him that I wasn’t coming in and he said that if I didn’t that I would be out of a job. So I didn’t go in, and guess who ended up having to cover for my shift anyway? 🙃
The district manager called me personally the next week to hire me back because my numbers were quite good, and they put me in a different location.
Having a chronic life threatening illness. Multiple times.
Alcohol.
Does getting laid off because a vulture company scooped up the place I was working, harvested the minimum wage workers, and fired everyone with a salary once they were done scraping our institutional knowledge out count?
I created a satirical Employee Handbook that, among other things, mocked the entire management chain and codified some of the unwritten rules among employees.
It was a crappy retail job so no real loss.
