Not every job works out, but it's seriously unusual for folks to be fired the very first day on the job. Whether it was because of incompetent management or some really ridiculous
Even Though He Could Have Really Hurt Her, She Was The One Who Got In Hot Water
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“My wife got a job at Bob Evans when she was a teenager. Her first customer was an older man, and apparently a regular. The customer ordered a black coffee, so my wife brought him a black coffee. Apparently, black coffee meant something totally different to the codger, because he wanted it with two creams and a sugar. His response to this adversity was, unlike a normal person who would ask for what they really want, to throw the cup of coffee at my wife. Her entirely reasonable response was to walk away. Her manager fired her on the spot. Apparently, she was supposed to ask the guy what was wrong in response to getting the coffee thrown at her; I think it’s for the best that she got out of there.”
After A While, They Realized His Alternative Motives For Working At McDonald’s
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“This happened when I was working at McDonald’s. A new guy came in and when he saw that we were trashing the cooked patties if they had been sitting too long, he ate them, then he started just eating them from the supply. Dude must have inhaled 10-12 patties over a couple hours after repeatedly being told to stop. Eventually, he started making himself a burger with the buns and eating it as well. Got fired first day on the job.
I’m still convinced he had no real plans of working and just wanted to see how many free burgers he could eat before getting canned.”
He Wanted To Do Something To Impress His Boss, Instead He Caused The Impossible
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“My dad worked at a bakery in Nantucket for one day. It had a reputation for having never closed in something like 100 years. He was a dishwasher or something else in the back and thought he’d try to impress his boss by cleaning the donut machine. Somehow he broke it, causing the machine to spill dough, oil, and water all over the floor of the restaurant and destroy the entire kitchen. The restaurant survived hurricanes, floods, and fires, but one day of my dad closed the place for the first time in the better part of a century.”
His Delivery Got Cut Drastically Short
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“I worked at Pita Pit in college for a day. About halfway through my first shift, the manager asked if I have a car. I said, ‘Yes, why?’ He said I had to go get it and deliver for him until close because the driver (who he was into) called out because she was too hungover. She said this while on speakerphone in front of, like, half of the people waiting in line and everyone else who was working. If I didn’t, he said, I was fired. He also told me I had to pay for my own gas and give all my tips to him since I was still making $8.20 an hour instead of the $4.50 the drivers made. He handed me seven bags and a list of Mapquest directions to them. Three of the deliveries were over 10 miles away, with the furthest being 17 miles away in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania that just screamed trouble.
Boss called me not even 15 minutes later, screaming at me for not making all of the deliveries yet and said that once I came back and gave him his tips, I was fired. With five deliveries left to go, I said, ‘Screw it,’ and went to my friend’s place with the rest of the food.
Screw that manager. They closed a few months later. He was doing all sorts of things wrong. Should have been on guard when the interview process was, ‘So this is my first business and I run things pretty casually, but to Pita Pit standards. Can you start Wednesday around noon?’ That was it.”
He Was Not Only Fired, But Banned From Chuck E Cheese
“When I was 17, I got a job at Chuck E Cheese. I worked the front door and once an hour, I had to put on the Chuck E costume and parade around the place. Here’s the deal with those. Kids are jerks. They kept constantly running up to me, hugging me and punching me in the crotch. After about five hours of this, I’d had enough. I purposely didn’t attach the head to the body. It was supposed to button into place. So after the 20th or so time being nut checked, I backed up, did a stupid little dance, grabbed my head piece and slowly began to twist it around my head. The kids started to freak. Some screamed, some cried. Parents started protesting. The older kids started laughing. The attendant who was with me fell down in laughter. I thought it was hilarious, however, the restaurant manager who hired me didn’t think it was that funny. I got ushered out the back door and banned from that particular Chuck E Cheese. Do I think it was worth it? Of course I do!”
His Erratic Behavior Was Suddenly Very Understandable
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“Someone I worked with had it happen to them. I was a line cook at a small pizza place. We hired this kid, who was around 17/18 years old, to work the counter. Simple enough job: answer phones, handle customers, etc. We also had a small label printer hooked up to the register. The labels corresponded with pizza/calzone orders. When the order was processed, the label would print out with the order number, pizza toppings, size, the basics. All there was to do was grab the right sized pizza box, stick the label on it, and leave the rest to the pizza guys.
So on this kid’s first day, one of the girls up front was showing him the ropes, but he seemed really spaced out. When she was going over the labeling process, he looked dumbfounded. So an order came through and she instructed him on what to do. He was holding the label while staring intently at the empty box, focusing like he was about to defuse a bomb. He would reach towards the box, label in hand at the speed of a tortoise. He never got the label on.
So, weirded out by this kid’s overall being, the girl who was training him just awkwardly took the label and stuck it on the box for him. He didn’t say a thing. He was not embarrassed, he was not apologetic; he just looked almost lobotomized. Now here’s the weird part:
He said he needed to use the bathroom. He went into the single use bathroom in the front of the store. He was in there for about 25-30 minutes. He came out, somehow looking worse and said he wasn’t feeling well and that his mom was on her way to pick him up. So now we’re all just thinking he was really sick or something. Explained the weird behavior, I guess. Regardless, we said no problem and sent him on his way.
About an hour later, the girl who was training goes to use the bathroom that he had used and found an eyeglasses case. She brought it to the manager and just said that someone must have forgotten it there by mistake. The manager opened up the case, and inside was a syringe, an empty baggie, and some thick rubber bands. Not sure what to do in this situation, our manager just immediately called the police and told them the situation. The cops came by about a half an hour later and went over the story, trying to figure out where the stuff came from. As the cops were about to leave, who walked in but Droopy McGoop Face himself. He immediately said, ‘I’m just here to pick up my eyeglasses case that I forgot in the-‘ At this point, he finally noticed the cop holding said case, ‘bathroom.’
Cops took him away. No clue what happened to him. All I know is that he did not end up working with us. Don’t do drugs, kids.”
She Shouldn’t Have Said That, But They Could Have Handled It Better
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“I was a hostess at Applebee’s for a day once. I was bussing a table and dropped a cup and whispered a swear word.
They never even told me that they fired me. I found out by going into work the next day to see that I was not on the schedule. I tried to talk to managers and everything. No one would tell me that I was fired. It was like a bad break up with mind games and eventually, I had to force myself into the GM’s office and made him explain to me what was going on. Shadiest. Crap. Ever.”
She Had Absolutely No Idea What Was Appropriate In The Workplace
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“When I was in school, I worked as an assistant manager in a deli. In all those years, this one girl stood out as the absolutely worst employee imaginable. She was just SO stupid.
Things she did:
1) Customer came up and asked for an extra side of ranch dressing. We had those little plastic dressing cups all over the place, but does she use one? No. Her solution was to grab a napkin and pour some ranch dressing on it and hand it to the customer like that.
2) When it was a bit slow, I said, ‘Hey why don’t you take a moment to wipe down the tables.’ Obviously, I meant the empty tables, but I looked over to see a whole group of customers cradling their food and drinks in their arms because she had asked them to take all the stuff off the table so she could wipe it down.
3) Like most restaurants, behind the counter and in the kitchen we have floor drains. This is so that at the end of the night when we wash the floors, we can use a copious amount of water to get them really clean and then squeegee the water into the floor drain. So a customer came up and said he got the wrong drink. I told her, ‘Just pour it out and give him what he asked for.’ Rather than take three steps to the sink to pour the drink out, she turned around and poured it into the floor drain, getting soda all over the floor and splashing it onto our pants.
4) While fixing a turkey sandwich, in plain view of the customer and myself, she kept popping pieces of the turkey into her mouth and eating them.
5) Customer walked up to give her order and before she could order, the girl said, ‘Do you mind if I go to the bathroom real quick before I take your order? I gotta go really bad.’
6) Customer asked for black pepper on his sandwich. At the time, it was the holidays, all of our salt and pepper shakers were these unique Christmas ones. You know, one was Santa Claus, one was Rudolph, etc. She literally came up to me, all frustrated, and said that she couldn’t tell whether the shaker in her hand was salt or pepper. I grabbed it, shook a tiny bit into my hand, and said, ‘It’s salt…’
7) Customer asked for an egg white omelet. She asked me if he still had to pay for the whole egg.
8) Customer asked for a medium coffee with ‘part skim milk, part whole milk.’ She poured the coffee into two separate cups. One with skim milk and the other with whole milk.
9) Final straw: In the middle of taking an order, she pulled her phone out and answered a text.
The crazy part was when I told her that she should just leave, it didn’t work out, and she shouldn’t come back, she kept acting like it was my fault for not explaining stuff to her. Like the rule that you shouldn’t answer a text in the middle of waiting on a customer, or that she didn’t know we weren’t supposed to use the floor drain to pour out drinks, or that she didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to ever tell a customer that she had to go to the bathroom, that she didn’t know there was a rule against eating the turkey off of a customer’s sandwich.
And yeah, she was a college student.”
He Didn’t Realize They’d Count The Drawer At The End Of His Shift
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“I worked at a Jamba Juice back in high school. We hired a guy who on his first day, they had him doing a little bit of everything just to learn, including the cash register. Well, when the end of his shift came around, his drawer was short $20. The manager started giving him this whole, ‘You need to be more careful and make sure you’re counting your bills correctly, keep the person’s paid cash out before you hand them change so you know the denomination,’ etc.
His response? ‘Oh, I didn’t think you were going to count that.’
After a stunned silence from the manager and everyone else in the breakroom/back office, he was fired on the spot.”
A Job Like That Ought To Come With A Pay Increase
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“I worked as a bag boy at a supermarket in high school. After working there for a year or so, they opened another store in town and offered to let anyone transfer there. It was a little closer to home, so I volunteered to go to the new store. I got transferred.
My first day at the new store, I was assigned bathroom clean up duty. That was always part of the job, but at the old store, all that was expected was that we’d take the trash to the dumpster when it was full, do a general mop the floors, restock paper towels, etc, just basics to keep the facilities generally clean during the day. There was a different crew that did after hours hard cleaning. Day one at the new store, someone has literally sprayed poop everywhere, the floor, walls, everywhere was covered with sloppy poo. I took one look and went to the manager and was like, ‘Yeah I make minimum wage and my job description says bag boy, not custodian. If you want me to clean a mess of human feces like that, you’re gonna have to pay me like the custodian crew and not a bag boy.’ He fired me on the spot and called me a punk kid who thought I was too good to do real work.”
He Really Wanted To Impress Those Cute Girls, But It Cost Him His Job
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“My first job ever was at Burger King. It was my first day and I was already bored to tears from working the register all day. Then this party of drunk girls came in and started flirting with me and messing around, asking what they could have for free. I told them nothing (my manager was literally right behind me), but once he cleared off, I just took a whole load of burgers and made six ice cream sundaes. I took it all over to the girls’ table to get some loving. I mentioned that I was new and my manager was a bit of a jerk, which is why I didn’t do it earlier. Imagine my delight when after flirting for five minutes, I noticed him sitting down on the table behind them (on his break) staring at me like I had just stomped his Guinea pig. I just walked straight out the door, didn’t even wait to get fired.”
He Wasn’t Even Dared
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“I got a job working in a grocery warehouse driving a forklift in the freezer section. This freezer was supposed to be kept at -20°F, which means they actually kept it a little colder (I once saw it at -46° on a rainy day).
Day one, as I’m getting a brief tour around the place by a rotund middle-management fellow, when we see a group emerge from the freezer, one guy in the middle clutching his mouth, tears in his eyes.
Y’know when kids dare each other to stick their tongues onto poles during winter? This guy did that of his own volition, in this incredibly cold room, and had to wait until someone stumbled upon him for rescue.
He was fired on the spot.”
They Thought SHE Was The One Who Made Her Cry
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“I got a job as a waiter at a Dallas area Chili’s. It was my first day and I was in training under a seasoned waitress. I thought things were going great! I had the entire menu and bar options memorized and I was polite and courteous to the customers. My uncle and mom even showed up on my first day for lunch. I took their order and delivered their food along with a dozen other tables. I’m not entirely certain when it happened, but about six hours into my shift, I noticed that the waitress who was training me had disappeared. So when it got slow enough, I went to look for her. She was in a supply room sitting on the ground crying her eyes out. I attempted to console her, asking what happened. She proceeded to tell me about how her boyfriend came to the restaurant and asked for the key to his place because he was kicking her out and breaking up with her. She had no place to go. So I went and found the shift manager and told her that my trainer was in the supply closet crying. After my shift was over, I was called into the office where the owner and general manager were waiting for me. They told me that they were firing me because I made my trainer cry. I had no idea what was going on and I told them what I saw and did. They didn’t even bother to retort, just told me to turn in my apron and leave. I found out later that she begged them for more hours so she could make enough money to get an apartment of her own, so those hours came from me.”
He Just Wasn’t Made From The Right Stuff
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“I saw this kid start his first day at my job. Dude looked like he was made out of paper. Arm braces, a knee brace, and all. He was a runner, which at my job is a pretty intense job that involves carrying heavy trays, walking up and down stairs, and dealing with volumes of hundreds of people. High stress, physically demanding, all that stuff. Guy was just not cut out for the job. Anyway, turns out he was allergic to peanut butter, and after carrying a tray with a peanut butter shake he had to go to the hospital. Never came back.”
His Homophobic Outburst Cost Him His Job
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“I started working part time last Christmas at a large supermarket chain, and they were hiring pretty much anyone and so didn’t have uniforms for everyone. So they ended up giving us aprons with the supermarket’s name on the front and we were supposed to wear it until they get our actual uniforms. There was this one guy that refused to wear the apron. His reason? He didn’t ‘want to wear that gay crap.’ He was promptly fired.”
His Looks Weren’t Up To Her Expectations
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“I put in an application at a small Italian bistro to be a waiter and never heard anything for weeks. Then out of nowhere, I got a call asking if I could come in to start training the next day. I was told to wear ‘black on black,’ which meant black pants and button down shirt.
I showed up the next day and the manager took one look at me and disappeared into the kitchen, then came back and said they didn’t need me after all. I’m a stocky bearded guy, not unkempt or unattractive, but I guess for whatever reason she assumed I was young and fit, or maybe she mixed me up visually with another applicant.
Then, as if to comfort me, she said, ‘Hey, you don’t get paid for training anyway!’ and sent me out the door. So I reported them to the minimum wage office for unpaid training, which is illegal in Pennsylvania, and they got fined.”
He’d Already Dropped Major Money On The Uniform That He Wouldn’t Get Back
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“I got a job as a waiter at an Australian themed steakhouse (no, not that one).
They had me buy construction boots as part of their uniform and a pair of black shorts totaling $50. I had never worked as a waiter before, so they had me shadow one of their waitresses. I followed her for drink orders at two tables and then she told the boss it wasn’t going to work out.
No idea what happened, and that was my last $50.
In retrospect, that place just screamed, ‘You don’t want to work here,’ but I’m still mad about it a decade and a half later.”
