There are some industries where you just can't mess around if you want to stick around. The food industry is definitely one of those industries. These workers didn't know how to behave themselves in a proper, professional manner, so they had to be let go.
(Content has been edited for clarity.)
He Couldn’t Even Do The Set Up And Prep In That State
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Cameras showed him literally falling over, unable to figure out how to exit the building when he’d finally been told to leave.
It sucks because he’s an old friend of mine and I really hope he gets the help he needs. But man, talk about how to get super fired.”
He Was So Terrible, His Union Just Gave Up On Him
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“I worked at a grocery store. It was unionized. Union dues suck, but it’s not like they don’t do stuff for you. There were regular pay raises and a decent layer between you and management.
The neatest thing with unions is that it’s pretty hard to get fired. You had to be stellar at uselessness to get canned.
So one week, we hired this new kid. He was very young, self-entitled, and he bragged a lot about nothing.
He rarely arrived on time. He took overly long breaks, always asked to leave early, and complained about lack of money and union fees.
He got fired. I was there for a year and I have never seen anyone actually get fired.
As it turns out, he would ask for tips. He would argue with the elderly over the quarters that were inserted into the carts. He wanted those quarters and they were his, dang it!
He also somehow bagged groceries badly. Turns out that heavy cans of soup and whatnot didn’t do good things on top of bread, eggs, and various other crushables.
I don’t believe he made it a full three weeks, part-time, before he was let go.
To this day, he is a testament to idiots everywhere.
The last straw was when he put eggs in the cart first, then dropped a bag of heavy cans over it. The customer got home, saw what happened, and came back furious. She had dented cans and a bag full of yolk surprise. He also argued with her over her quarter used to get the cart. He may have also insulted management/the job when confronted.”
Line Cooks Are Often Troubled People, But This Guy Was Something Else
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“We had a line cook who was an ex-gang member, had lots of gang tattoos, spent weekends in the police tank. You know, your normal, crappy line cook stuff.
One day, he sauntered into work with a backpack, reeking of pot and Jack, not in uniform, and under the influence of probably like four different illegal substances. This was also the first time he came in with a backpack, I should note. He worked the line for 10 minutes, messing up, like, four orders, then went and took a 10-minute break. I went out and found him sitting out back in full daylight, and in FULL VIEW OF THE PARKING LOT, smoking a crack pipe. I walked over to him to tell him off and tell him to pack his crap up and leave for the day. Then I noticed the two 15-year-olds sitting next to him, waiting their turn.
He freaked out, begged me to not call the cops and to let him finish his shift. First, he broke the rules, and I had to let him go. Second off, dealing out of the restaurant to MINORS is obviously immoral and illegal as heck. Third, this had been his last warning, as he had come in a few times completely off his rocker. He started crying, begging me to not fire him. I told him I would bring his bag out to him and then he had to go. I went inside then came back out to give him his bag, only to find him getting arrested Someone saw everything in the parking lot and called the cops. He looked at me with puppy eyes and shook his head as hard as he could, basically begging me without words to not give the cops the bag. I just handed the bag to the cops, said it was his, then turned to him and said, ‘You reap what you sow. Hope everything works out eventually.’
This was about two years ago. I’ve heard he got out recently and has turned his life around.”
She Had A Complicated System For Ripping Off Her Workplace
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“Before the proliferation of debit cards, a shift manager at the fast food joint I worked at schemed her way into a massive pay increase.
She was smart, but not smart enough. She worked the drive-thru window as the cashier/order-taker. She had memorized the totals for the most popular combos. She would call out for the orders manually to the kitchen, which was staffed mostly by high school kids who just wanted to get through the shift. They’d make whatever she called for.
When the customer would arrive at the window with cash, she’d make change in the same way that a waiter/waitress would, but would do it out of the customer’s view (usually between the register and the wall, or she’d leave the till propped open and make change out of there.)
She’d pocket the $3-$7 for the order, the register would balance because it never entered the system, and she’d walk with an extra $50+ each shift.
Eventually, management caught her (I think it was a customer who said something was suspicious). She wasn’t prosecuted since this was before the proliferation of interior cameras in the work areas and they didn’t have any concrete proof of more than one incident.
So if your fast food job seems overly Big Brother today, this is what caused it to happen.”
Security Cameras Can Catch Employees Doing All Sorts Of Things
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“My family owned a restaurant. One night the general manager sent all of the staff home early inexplicably. My parents thought they should look at the security videos to see why he might have sent all the staff home early. They discovered that, as soon as all the employees left, he pleasured himself all over the food prep surfaces.
Later, at another restaurant I was working at, one of the managers was a lesbian and there were repeated incidents of vandalism to the outside door with anti-gay slurs and hate speech. The GM moved a security camera to see if they could catch whoever was doing it. It turned out to be that same lesbian manager writing fake hate speech to get attention. It was especially messed up because the owners of the restaurant had taken care of her. Like, they’d paid $15,000, cash, for a medical procedure she had needed just because they were really nice people.”
This Was Just The Excuse They Were Looking For To Get Her Fired
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“A cook at my restaurant called in sick one day and the very next day (her scheduled day off), she came in for happy hour to get wasted. This was after a dedicated career of poor work, so when we begged the owner, ‘Can she PLEASE be fired now?’He agreed. We called her in to meet and when we let her go, she delivered a response that none of us were expecting.”
