Sometimes, there are workers so bad that it's an absolute pleasure to let them go. These workers were lazy, unprofessional, and some of them were even thieves. The managers who finally fired them probably wondered why they didn't do so ages ago.
He Bit Off More Than He Could Chew
“I didn’t personally fire this person, but I was the manager on duty at the restaurant.
The new-ish server was dealing with a complaint a customer had with their BLT. Rather than have me talk to the table, he took a bite out of it and said, ‘I’m not seeing the problem.'”
He Just Could Not Control His Eyes
“The busser kept staring at everyone’s bosoms. I mean, literally EVERYBODY who was in the restaurant. Especially co-workers, but also customers. And not just attractive females of a similar age, we’re talkin’ frail Grandma Betty with tennis ball walkers. Gaze locked in, stationary. Regardless of age, size, or other deterring factors, if it was a female, his eyes were laser-locked on to Sweater Kitten Town, USA. Of course, once I found out he was fired immediately. That was a pretty awkward conversation.
To this day, I have never encountered someone who admired the female form as much as he.”
He Was An Absolute Menace On The Roads
“When I managed a pizza chain store, one of the drivers was having a bad time of it and was ‘taking it out’ on the road while on delivery. On his first delivery, he ran over a customer’s dog. On the next delivery, he did a burnout in front of the customer’s house. On the third delivery, he ran a red light and got pulled over.
I pulled him aside after that and asked him if there was anything we (the company) could do to help, maybe some time off, etc. He told me to screw off.
I gave him a warning to keep his behavior in check or there would be repercussions.
On his fourth, and final, delivery for the night, he did a burnout while leaving the store, hit a police car, and went on a 20-minute police chase. During the chase, I simply texted him, ‘I hope the customer pays for that pizza, because it’s your severance, don’t come back.’ I got no reply, but then again, he spent the night in jail and wound up going to prison for a couple of years for some outstanding domestic violence stuff.
He never delivered, the customer called after 30 minutes with no delivery, so we gave him a couple of free pizzas and profuse apologies. I would hate to imagine the state of the pizza in his car right now because it was likely in his car for at least three years in the impound.”
They Thought They Were In Ocean’s Eleven Or Something
“While managing a Subway, I always came in on Wednesday mornings with my assistant manager to do weekly inventory and our twice a week safe deposit. Everyone at the store is well aware of this date.
We counted the safe drawers and deposits, they were $600 short. I immediately called the closer, no answer. We reviewed the cameras and saw she propped the back door open and then closed up for the night.
About 30 minutes later, two people entered the back, grabbed the safe keys, and grabbed a decent amount of cash. They were smart and avoided parking in our lot, but I talked to the neighboring business and asked for their camera feed. Sure enough, the closer and a former employee pulled into that lot, put masks on and walked over.
I called the cops, told them she’d be in for a shift in a bit. She showed up, got arrested and fired. Her claim: she needed rent money and she was going to put it back on Friday when she got paid. I had to remind her she worked less than 20 hours a week and didn’t make enough, she balled her eyes out.
I saw her a year later at another Subway. I talked to the manager and found out he was missing money weekly from the safe. I still get angry messages on Facebook from her through mutual friends, eight years later.”
When They Checked The Cameras, They Realized Why His Performance Had Been So Poor
“I had an employee apologize to two different tables for forgetting to put their food order in. They had been waiting for 45 minutes, and nothing had been entered into the system.
We looked at the camera system because he had been acting weird all day. After he wrote down their order, he proceeded to go outside and fire up his favorite, recreational illegal substance. He was apparently too high to remember to put in the order.
It was his first, and last day.”
He Made An Unsettling Discovery In The Walk-In Cooler
“My college town hamburger joint gets busy as heck on the weekends. We had a five-man crew on a Saturday night and about an hour and a half into service, I noticed my fry boy was taking a heck of a long time bringing back frozen appetizers from the cooler. I left expo in a huff and stomped to the back to yell at him. I threw open the walk-in door. This short, Irish leprechaun-looking idiot was getting his Johnson polished by the new dish girl (who was the owner’s friend’s barely legal daughter).
I fired him after the dinner rush.
She wasn’t fired, the owner is a sexist turd. He was a liability in the kitchen anyway, and you don’t do naughty times at work. Or if you do, everyone knows you do it in management’s office with a locking door.”
“He Chased A Pair Of Tongs Into The Deep Fryer With His BARE HANDS”
“He took something, came into work lit as one can be still standing, and then chase a pair of tongs into the deep fryer with his bare hands. Not just hand. Hands. He got mad when we told him he had to go to the hospital, so he ‘quit,’ and walked out. And went down the street to Taco Bell, where he got a job application, and a taco box. Then he came back to our restaurant and asked to borrow a pen, and offered me a taco in exchange for it. I took the taco and called the ambulance. It was a weird day.”
He Had To Be Bananas To Do Something Like That
“He stole a bunch of bananas. Seriously. It was a college dining hall. He was an employee of the dining hall and got free meals while on-shift. He was not working that day, but he walked into the serving area, hid a bunch of bananas in his bag, and tried to pass the cashier while only paying for what was on his tray. When confronted and asked if he ‘had forgotten anything, maybe in his bag?’ he denied having anything else. Fired on the spot. The worst part, he was on a meal plan (a kind of debit system, except you, never get the money back at the end of the semester if you don’t spend it). He had plenty of money for the semester. I have no idea why he felt the need to steal bananas.”
Customers Found Something Strange With Their Bill
“One day at an old job, we got a call from a customer complaining that her credit card statement didn’t match her receipt. It was $5 over. We got another call later that day saying the same thing. Later on, a dude walked in to complain about the same thing. Two more people came in later. Their waiter had added $5 to each of their tips. They were all at the same table. Idiot. This was a table of five people all sitting together at lunch for a work meeting. They noticed the discrepancies when the first woman’s itemized receipts didn’t match up to what they said they had spent, and she asked her colleagues if it was the same for them. He was fired on the spot, rightfully. And the customers got lots of gift certificates.”
When They Confronted Him About The Theft, He Revealed Something That Left Them Reeling
“I had an assistant manager who would short the till $3.64. Every single day, it was always the same amount, and we could never prove it was him, even though it clearly lined up with only his shifts. Day or night. Until one day, he came back from lunch at Taco Bell in our parking lot, and my other assistant saw his lunch and thought to herself ‘That looks good!’ She walked across the street on her break and ordered the same thing. Her total? $3.64! She immediately came back and told me, I pulled all the drawers and sure enough one was short that exact amount!
The kicker: when he was sat down by our district manager to be terminated, all they told him was, ‘We know what you’ve been stealing!’
And his response was ‘Oh! You finally figured out I was stealing all those Skechers Shape-Ups?!'”
He Was Caught Red-Handed
“I worked at this Japanese restaurant that basically had a new cashier every week. Either people would quit because they couldn’t handle one of the owners or they got fired. These are the stupidest and most memorable:
One guy got fired for selling some illegal substances. The stupidest part of that is he did it in this one hallway that was away from the customers, but it did have a camera pointed directly in the area, so there was video evidence of what he was doing.
Another guy got hired to work as a cook, showed up a lot worse for wear on the first day. I had to pick him up at the bus stop and saw him finishing off a tall boy, but I thought maybe it was just one. He definitely had more, he almost set fire to the kitchen he was so wasted. I ended up giving him a ride back to the bus station, which was incredibly awkward.
Then there was this delivery driver that tried to change the tip on his delivery. It was so obvious, but we still ended up calling the customer to confirm what they had tipped and we were right.”
He Just Couldn’t Take That Someone Else Was Funnier Than Him
“I used to work at a popular coffee chain, and we had this supervisor who was an actor in all these local community theater things and wanted to get into stand up comedy. Well, if somebody else was funny, he obviously got ticked off that he wasn’t the one in the limelight. A new guy was hired who was really funny, and the supervisor was always being a jerk to him, giving him the crappiest jobs and picking on him. One night, the supervisor was being a complete jerk, and a bunch of us pipe up to tell him to chill out and he’s being a big ol’ meanie. Something snapped. The supervisor absolutely lost it, went into the backroom, and grabbed a bunch of frozen donuts and just came out and was throwing them at the funny guy angrily, just swearing at him and berating him. Then he just walked out the back door and walked off down the street.
We all thought he quit on the spot, but he just went to smoke and came back 10 minutes later. By that point, someone called the manager and she came in and canned him on the spot. He broke down crying in what had to be the most pathetic, snot ridden scene I’ve ever witnessed. Awesome.”
Her Mom Ruined Her First Job
“We had a young girl start in the deli counter of the supermarket I worked in. Her family was Lebanese, and the very first day the girl’s mother was just hanging around the counter, watching everything. After a while, the deli manager asked if she’s okay.
She said that she was just there to make sure her daughter was okay. The deli manager politely told her that she’ll be fine, and she can go home, but the mother refused. After a little while longer, the Deli manager insisted that she go home because she doesn’t appreciate being watched as she does her job and interacts with the new girl. The woman still refused.
The Deli manager then gave her an ultimatum – go home now or you can take your daughter with you. That was the girl’s first and last day at the supermarket.”
He Admired His Creative Spirit, But The Guy Still Had To Go
“I used to manage a pizza chain. A long day at work was coming to an end when I told a new guy to vacuum the dining area. He came back 10 minutes later, and I heard the vacuum running, but couldn’t see it or the new guy. I looked over the bar and saw the new guy vacuuming while laying down. I really wanted to give him points for creativity, but he had been horrible all day so I let him go.”
They Have A Real Problem With No-Shows
“We hired a girl to work in a bagel store, who on her first day told me she couldn’t touch any of the meats because she was vegan.
I had another guy show up for work his first day, was doing just fine, seemed to be good with the job. I went to the office to get some paperwork for him to fill out, and he was just gone. Never came back, didn’t steal anything, no explanation at all.
The bad one was the time we had to fire a girl for not showing up for several days in a row. I saw in a newspaper the next week that she had been in jail the whole time because she had locked her kids in a closet while she was buying illegal substances.”
She Promised It Wouldn’t Be A Problem…Then Her Boyfriend Showed Up
“When I managed a small local coffee shop, the new girl in the break room shook her container of pills and said she pops them whenever she feels anxious, but it’s not a problem.
It became a problem when her boyfriend came storming into the shop one day and started screaming about his pill stash that went missing, and she began screaming back and threatened to take the entire bottle in front of all of the customers.
Yeah, see ya.”
They Referred To Him As “Philly Vanilly” After That
“I worked at a grocery store and this dude that had been working for two days was taking all the vanilla extract off the shelf and getting turned up by it. We’d find the bottles in the back bathroom that only employees used. Everyone knew. He slept in the bathroom for two hours and still didn’t get fired. He ended up quitting.
His name was Phil so we’d all call him Philly Vanilly after the fact.”
“He Was The Densest Sucker I Have Ever Seen”
“I had a kid who worked the front counter of my shop who was perhaps the densest sucker I have ever seen. I had to speak to him several times because his default position was to stand behind the register and stare into space. Even when there were customers waiting to order.
One day, I asked him to go over the opening checklist and make sure everything was done. I went about my business, but five minutes later I looked over at him and he was still staring at the checklist. He looked up at me, nodded and said, ‘Looks good to me!’
When I asked if he was sure everything was done, he pointed to the list and showed me where things were checked off.
I sat and explained to him that those check marks had been made weeks before and didn’t mean those tasks had been completed today. I had to hold his hand while we went through the whole list.
Later on that day, I asked him to check on the drink cooler to make sure it was stocked. He literally leaned out from the counter, looked at the cooler, then back at me and nodded. ‘Looks good!'”
She Knew What She Was Getting Into When She Applied
“My boss hired this new girl to work on one of our stalls at a market. She arrived and told us she won’t work with meat because she’s vegan. He pointed out to her this is a sausage stall, and as such we only sell meat. And she applied in person at the stall, so it’s not like she didn’t know in advance. I have no idea what she expected to happen. I left it to the boss to explain to her that if she’d either have to work with meat or she’d have to leave.”
They Told On Themselves With Social Media
“They went on Facebook and recorded themselves, live, licking a burger pattie and putting in a bun, then putting it together and sending it down the line.
We’re friends on Facebook. I watched it happen live. I went in on my day off to fire them.”
The Delivery Girl Had No Idea Why Showing Up Without A Car Was A Problem
“I ran a delivery sub shop and fired people for various crazy reasons. I could go on and on with outrageous stories.
The silliest was when one of my delivery drivers got dropped off at work. When I asked her why she didn’t have a car to take deliveries, she didn’t see why it was even an issue. ‘Okay, just go ahead and walk back home, then. Bye Felicia.’
Then there was this guy selling illegal substances on his deliveries, like c’mon dude.
The best story is actually about a lady (twice my age) who quit because I wrote her up. She missed a shift and normally that’s automatic termination, but I decided I’d let her catch a break. Honestly, I just felt bad for her. But the next day when she came in, she started screaming and demanding an apology for disrespecting her and when I denied my need to apologize, she ripped off her shirt, threw it in my face and stormed out to the bus station to wait for a ride home. Like, what? She rode the bus to work so she could quit and ride it back home.
Every day was an adventure at that job, that’s for sure.”
He Would Do The Dumbest Things That Made The Whole Store Look Bad
“I worked at a pizza place. We had a new server working on a busy night. The manager runs outside for a smoke after being stuck inside for four hours, then the phone rings. New server answered and the person complained about their pizza that was delivered being cold. The new server said that he didn’t know what to tell them and that they should just microwave it, then hung up. The manager wasn’t happy when they called back.
That guy didn’t get fired from that though. A week later, we had to throw out the entire salad bar because he flipped a switch on it that was clearly labeled ‘DON’T TOUCH’ when taking it down the night before. Openers didn’t realize it the next morning, and the following night we had a salad bar at room temperature.”
You’ll Never Guess Where They Saw The “Sick” Busser Next
“I was an assistant manager at a restaurant for a while and one of the newer bussers had called in three times in his first two weeks. He called in on Saturday, telling me he was deathly sick and couldn’t even get out of bed.
Around 9 p.m. after the dinner rush, one of my servers ask me to go check on table 42. I turn the corner and there is the ‘sick’ busser lit out of his mind with two buddies, just casually eating.”