Guilty By Association

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“I worked in a grocery store at the time. Every inch of the place (with the exception of the bathrooms) was covered by the cameras. There was no such thing as the cameras having a blind spot. I had a security guard I liked warn me to be careful of what I did due to the lack of blind spots and many of the cameras being hidden from view.
Despite the fact that there was literally no point during the day when you were off camera there were six people stealing thousands from the cash drawers and stealing credit card information each week. All six were arrested and walked out of the store in cuffs.
Since I liked all six and was considered a friend, I had my cash drawer randomly audited periodically for a few months after that. Every time someone new started to steal, even if I was known to dislike that person, the auditing began again.
I eventually quit before they could fire me.”
That Wasn’t The Best Of Decisions

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“I used to work for a major chain of coffee shops. One day, one of the young baristas couldn’t open a bag of coffee for a customer who wanted it ground up.
He obviously wasn’t thinking and used his teeth to tear the bag open right in front of the customer.
That would have been bad enough if the idiot wouldn’t have also done this directly in front our jerk of a district manager who was doing a walkthrough of the store along with our store manager.
The district manager immediately took the kid to the back, the store manager started helping the customer by giving and throwing free drink coupons at him.
Five minutes later, the kid walked out with all of his personal belongings. The district manager had seen enough and fired him on the spot.”
He Just Couldn’t Change His Ways

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“We had a former executive chef working the fry station at a busy fast-casual restaurant where I used to work. He was slowly working his way back up the line – no small task at 45. After a while, it started to become apparent the guy had a serious drinking problem.
One day, multiple customers notified management that the door to the bathroom had been locked for over 20 minutes. They ended up finding the cook passed out in the bathroom with an empty fifth of Tito’s on the floor beside him. The front of house manager had him walked out the back door.
I saw him a month or so later passed out at a bus stop in a filthy chef coat, looking like he’d been sleeping out on the streets for weeks.”
Someone Didn’t Get The Memo

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“I once worked on a casual contract for a few summers in a food factory. It was one of those ones that make microwave meals. We worked in the cooking area and would have a laugh during the shift, but were all mature enough to know when to get on with the work.
Anyway, there was one kid who started fresh out of school and really wanted to get taken on permanently.
A couple of months in, we both got offered full-time positions. I turned it down as I was going back to college a few weeks later, so there was no point, but this kid took it.
Having done all the paperwork, he started his first week and what would be his last on the job. Most of the meals were made for big brand companies and a very major customer was coming in for a visit that week. This meant we basically all had the day off from work so we wouldn’t mess up, but instead, a sample line was being run just so they could see the process and we wouldn’t lose the contract.
The kid didn’t grasp the importance of this and came out of the cold store with some mash potatoes to throw at someone. This would have been ok on any other day as long as senior management weren’t around, but not this day. Instead, he hit one of the visitors.
The kid was gone within the hour and left in a flood of tears.”
The Old “I Found A New Opportunity” Line

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“I worked in a grocery store years ago. The store manager (Phil) and the produce manager were married. They were both in their mid-50s. To sort of put our perception of their marriage in perspective: Phil was maybe 5’8 130lbs and very effeminate, and his wife was was at least 6′ tall, maybe 350lbs, and very masculine. We all knew who wore the pants in their house.
Rumors started flying that Phil had a thing for a much younger part-time cashier (Angie), who was rather attractive and known for getting around. I’m not even sure if she was 18. Phil would let her slide on so many things. Clocking in late, taking long breaks, disappearing in the women’s restroom for lengthy amounts of time, cash drops coming up short, showing up wasted, etc. You can imagine the anger this stirred up with the other cashiers because Phil wasn’t shy about writing people up for any reason. Several people filed complaints to corporate to no avail, since Phil had been there for 20 years.
One day, Angie suddenly has a brand new car. Nothing crazy, some sort of tiny compact car. She told one coworker she saved up and bought it, told another that her grandma bought it for her. Everyone knew exactly how she got it. As if to confirm it, Phil started making Angie’s schedule so they didn’t work together, because you know, it makes everything so much less obvious. What was obvious is they consistently had the same days off, at least one day every week, and Phil’s wife usually worked on those days.
It came to a head when another cashier who had been there for years (Mary) made a cash drop one afternoon and was a couple of bucks short. Phil made the mistake of making a big deal about it in front of all the other cashiers (including Angie) and several customers. Even worse, he brought his wife in as backup, so she could get a few words in on Mary as well (because his wife didn’t like her attitude). But Mary wasn’t about to take that.
‘I’M $2 SHORT AND YOU LET THIS LITTLE WITCH GET AWAY WITH MURDER JUST BECAUSE SHE’S SUCKING YOUR NASTY LITTLE JUNK IN THE PARKING LOT? IS THAT HOW THIS PLACE WORKS? I COULD USE A NEW CAR, WANT ME TO GET ON MY KNEES RIGHT NOW?’
Dead silence. And then Phil’s wife lost her mind and started screaming at Mary at the top of her lungs. Mary just turned and left the store. A few days later, Mary came back, and said that Phil had a meeting with her about ‘rumor mongering,’ and also told her he was ‘going to let her short cash drop slide, this time.’
You’d think that was the end of it, but no. A few days later, Phil called a store-wide meeting to talk to everyone about spreading rumors and how it was detrimental to teamwork and such. We all just sat there in silence and disbelief. His wife and Angie were absent.
A week or so passed. One day, I was in the back unloading a shipment, and I started hearing loud crashing noises from the produce area. I then saw Phil’s wife running out the rear service door. I heard her car crank and peel out of the parking lot.
Apparently, another employee had gone to lunch, saw Phil and Angie eating together at KFC on their mutual day off, and reported back in… to basically everyone working up front. This info made it’s way to Phil’s wife and she went to find them. And she did find them.
Phil, his wife, and Angie missed the next few days of work. When Phil came back, he announced that he was leaving the store because he had found another opportunity (he quit before he could get fired) and that he felt like he had worked in the same place for too long. His wife was also with him, totally silent.
Angie kept working there as a cashier, only now she’s even more smug. Even the new manager (the former assistant manager) was on the receiving end. This girl just didn’t care. She asked for time off, she got time off. She wanted more/less hours, she got them. Show up late? No problem! And Phil’s wife avoided her like the plague.
I am convinced that everything got back to corporate and Angie blackmailed them. Her behavior after Phil left would have gotten anyone fired, but she was never even written up as far as I know. The store went to crap with sales and overall appearance because all the employees stopped caring, and anytime the new manager brought it up, the reply was ‘What about Angie? Why aren’t you talking to her about X Y and Z?’
I’m not sure what happened in the long run, but Angie was still working there when I quit and moved to another city, about six months after everything happened. She was also very, very pregnant.”
The Milk Wasn’t The Only Thing Spoiled

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“This is many years ago before I graduated.
The guy was the health inspector at the dairy product plant. The truck was running late and he started going on about how he had to leave work exactly on time today. The workday was 10 hours for him, and so far, the truck was only 30 minutes late. There was enough slack in the schedule that they could accommodate him.
He kept going on and on about it, and one of the managers basically told him that he was not leaving early and that was final. He decided to storm off. He got in his car and started driving home. As he drove away, he passed the truck he was waiting on. The truck arrived and no one could sign for it, and so it sat there full of milk in the hot summer heat.
Long story short, I got called to that plant to deal with it. The other guy went home and for the next few days has his wife called up yelling how she was going to sue the company for firing her husband.
The husband at one point called CEO of the company and threatened to sue them for firing him, for literally walking off the job. The company lost about $65,000 in milk alone due to spoilage. The other ends of the production chain sat idle for days with nothing to do.
I remember talking to one of the managers later on:
‘If he had to leave right on time, why didn’t he wait until right on time? Why did he leave eight hours early.'”
The Owner Picked A Great Night To Check On His Store

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“A few years ago, I got one of my friends a job at the convenience store where I work. We’re a 24-hour store and he was the primary overnighter.
He would be the only employee on duty, and part of the job description was that he had to take care of the deliveries, so check everything in and price and put it all away.
One night, THE OWNER OF THE COMPANY (we’re a pretty big company in the Northeast) decided to pose as part of the truck delivery team. The truck showed up to our store and my friend was outside smoking, horsing around with the regular overnight customers, and just generally paying no mind to the delivery. He went inside after a bit and some customers followed. After signing off the delivery, he was chased around the store by one of the male customers who then held him down and forcibly humped him.
He got a call in the morning and told to come to the store. He was fired on the spot and given whatever money he was owed for the week.”
“Karma… It Works”

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“From what I understood, I caused a domino effect at a local big-chain pizza place.
The pizza place I worked at wasn’t a full-service restaurant, which they’re mainly known for; it was a take-out or delivery only store, located in a shopping center with several other businesses.
During the two years I worked there, we had gone through three store managers. The first manager was awesome. He was firm, strict, but fair. The second manager was a bit of a ditz. He went by the book, but you could tell his heart wasn’t really in it. I think he preferred to be a driver than a manager. The third manager was an all-out witch. She mistreated the employees, especially the men, and she’d do things that only benefited her, not others.
I was getting fed up. She had put a suggestion box outside her office. I wrote a lengthy suggestion that she treat her employees with respect. She basically fired me. She said I’d resigned. I didn’t care. I was no longer under her tyrannical rule.
A friend of mine who still worked there called me a week later and told me three other people quit because like me, they got tired of her crap.
Later that same year (I quit late Summer), about two weeks after Halloween, my parents ordered a pizza from that pizza place’s major competitor. They asked me to give the driver the money, and when I did, it turned out to be a driver I knew from the other place. She told me she quit on Halloween night because she wanted to take her 4-year-old trick-or-treating, but the manager said no, then she (the manager) took off early, in the middle of a rush, to take her own 8-year-old daughter trick-or-treating. The driver that was now working for the competitor told me she threw her hat at the manager, told her to get lost and quit right there.
A year or two later, I ran into the old assistant manager, who was now working at an Arby’s. She told me many others had quit, and that manager was no longer there; she and her husband were fired, due to stealing money from that store.
Karma…it works.”
His Plan To Earn A Few Hundred Bucks Cost Him Thousands Instead

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“I used to work at a fast food restaurant. This guy was caught stealing money from customers by essentially charging $0.50 to use credit cards at the register (which has no charge) by doing it in cash out. He would remember how many times he did this each shift and would stop when he reached $50. This might sound time-consuming, but it was easy to rack up during an eight-hour shift on the register. The customers wouldn’t notice $0.50 extra charge and the tills were never down.
It was a smart scheme until he got caught. He lost his cool because he thought they wouldn’t be able to fire him because he wasn’t stealing from the store. He ripped off his uniform, stormed out the store, turned around as said: ‘Good luck cleaning this up,’ and pulled the lever on the anti-fire mechanism, filling the entire store with this foam that put out massive fires (basically if the store is going to burn down/kill someone you pull it).
It was a $20,000 cleanup. All of the stock was ruined. The store took him to court and being a multi-billionaire company with some very good friends who happen to be lawyers, I assume he lost.
He probably stole around $500 over the span of a month, but it ended up costing him tens of thousands”
This McDonald’s Should Have Probably Been Shut Down

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“I was an assistant manager for McDonald’s way back in the day.
One day, we had a drive-thru customer come inside, furious because instead of a Filet-O-Fish in her bag, there was nasty, dirty, grill towel. The store manager happened to be there that day and handled this customer. She went back to the grill area and asked everyone: ‘Who did this?’
This one guy proudly took credit for it. She was in the process of telling him he was fired when he just yelled out: ‘I quit!’ and marched out with a big old smile on his face.
When I ended up quitting, I was at that time an assistant manager, and pretty much ran the store. We had just had an evaluation done on our store and the manager was not happy with the grade, so he took it out on me, even though the grade meant nothing; they gave us three reviews, and the first one is always bad.
I got sick of him chewing me out all the time, so I told him I would quit. He just said; ‘Whatever,’ so I did. I handed him my keys and walked out. To show just how out of touch with his job he was, I was scheduled to open the next day. Nobody ever covered that shift, so when he pulled up to work at 9 am, all the opening crew was across the street at a donut shop.
It’s a pretty big offense to not open a McDonald’s (especially a corporate one) on time.”
No One Went Home Happy After This Work Trip

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“I worked for a restaurant opening team, so we traveled for months at a time, living in hotels.
We all shared rooms, and while the coordinators tried to put us with our friends, sometimes there were issues. Two guys were sharing in Arkansas. One was a nice guy who was usually very professional. One was a very straight country boy, but really sweet. The straight guy met a local girl and they were going to dinner. He asked his roommate if it was okay to bring her to the room to watch movies after. He agreed.
When they got back to the room, he unlocked the door and the date walked in. The roomie was on the straight guy’s bed, passed out, junk in one hand, lotion in the other, evidence of his good time all over straight guy’s bedspread.
The straight guy knocked on my door, made me witness the carnage, and then roomed with me that night. It was the one time management knew that a guy spent the night with a female coworker and were okay with it.
He never saw the date again. Roomie was sent home the following morning.”
Hot Tempers And Fast Food Don’t Really Go Together

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“I worked at a fast food restaurant with a very hot-tempered guy several years ago. He was a great employee but had terrible anger issues and quit multiple times, but was always rehired. He got into an argument with our boss one day and told him to kiss his butt. The boss warned him not to say it again. He yelled: ‘Kiss my butt’ in the boss’s face, then proceeded to take off his uniform shirt and pants and throw them at the boss.
Then he walked out the back door and we see him walk past the drive-thru window in his boxers and timberlands. He walked all the way home like that (about one mile).
None of us could look at each other until our boss left because we were trying not to laugh. He was rehired about a year later.”
He Gave Them Everything, They Gave Him A Pink Slip

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“I was the lead cook in a million dollar kitchen at a multi-million dollar high-end restaurant. The executive chef had been there since they opened and worked his way from the bottom to the top in four years.
That place was his life and he was dedicated to it. The absentee owners had hired a ‘do nothing, know nothing’ manager. After weeks of complaining, the owners had a meeting with the manager and gave him a week to get on top of his job.
The chef went on vacation that week, and the manager saw that as an opportunity to buddy up with owners. A week and two rounds of golf later, the chef came back to work to a pink slip. All but three of the 30 employees came in and resigned immediately after.”
“No On Wants To Open Dunkin Donuts”

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“I was one of three people who opened my Dunkin Donuts at 5 am, which meant we had to be there at 4:30 for prep. My coworkers were quite the characters.
One of them was a dealer who also cooked for the Applebee’s across the street. He was a pretty chill guy and the customers liked that he played Frank Sinatra on his phone which drowned out the soul-sucking pop radio station that was on repeat.
The other person was a 30-year-old addict who was horribly abrasive to everyone and had a 2-year-old with a deadbeat.
Anyways, a combination of two of us opened the store. On days that these two people opened, there was always a shortage of hash browns at 6 am. No one knew why. Until one day, when I came to work (had a later shift), and neither of them was at work.
Apparently, no one had unlocked the door to let customers in at 5 am. This led to the manager being phoned and she came in early to find Jesse and Jaime passed out naked in the freezer located in the basement. They would both get in at 4:30 am, cook the hash browns, go downstairs in the freezer where there were no cameras, smoke and then bang.
They were hired back a week later because no one wants to open Dunkin Donuts.”
This Manager’s Plan To Start Anew Failed Miserably

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“My brother used to work at a sushi restaurant and was on the main line. The owner had been pretty hands off the entire time my brother was there and had basically allowed the managers to run the restaurant, and it was doing pretty well. The restaurant was always busy and got generally good reviews.
One day, the owner stepped back in and decided to take control again. After being out of the picture for over two years, he decided that he needed to clean house and fired half of the managers. Everyone was ticked about it but decided to stick around still.
A couple days later the owner decided to fire five out of his seven sushi chefs, including my brother. The two remaining sushi chefs quit on the spot when they found out about it, and by the end of the day all the remaining managers, all the remaining kitchen staff, and almost all the servers had quit.
The owner had to shut the restaurant down until he could hire new staff. The problem with that was that this happened in a relatively small town and all the restaurant workers had heard about what happened so nobody was applying to work there. He ended up having to close the restaurant. My brother now works at a much fancier sushi restaurant.”
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