Managers Share The Things Employees Did That Made Them Instantly Fire Them

Almost everyone has a horrible boss story, but what about bosses? What kind of stories do they have to tell?

Reddit user MarsNeedsFreedomToo asked "Managers of Reddit, what is the most unprofessional thing an employee has done that resulted in an immediate termination?"

30 Hours or Less

I work in pizza delivery and we had a guy back in the day (fellow manager) who tried to shut down the store 5 hours before the time that corporate set for us to close. He clocked every person out and sent them home and then just refused to take the phone calls or anything like that. He was fired immediately after our boss found out and he even tried to come into work the next day like everything was fine.

Circular File

I gave my secretary a document that I wanted incorporated into a letter I had written, and she hucked the document like a frisbee into her trashcan. It was literally my only copy so I had to walk over and fish it out. That was her last day.

No Show

I had a tech who wasn't showing up for work and forcing his junior coworker to lie on his behalf and do all the work by himself. We were installing some massive printers and it was a huge liability to have the younger guy be doing all the heavy lifting on his own. I had to promise the younger guy that I wouldn't fire him if he told the truth.

Overly Aggressive

Had an employee pull a gun on me.

This was after he was fired for threatening others at a tier 1 help desk. Made everyone uncomfortable the entire time he was there.

He's still in jail, it's been about 8 years now.


Employee 1 wearing earplugs on a string.

Employee 2 comes up behind 1 and decides to yank on string which pulls earplugs out of ears very fast. This causes a vacuum in the ear canal and effectively "pops" your eardrums outward, it hurts bad.

Employee 1 got mad, yelled and possibly cussed employee 2.

Employee 2 decides he doesn't like attitude about the situation.

Employee 2, who is an amateur boxer, punches 1 to lay him out on floor.

Long Lunch

I had an employee who got drunk on her lunch break, flipped her car, went to jail, mugshot with our company logo on her shirt.


No Tip for Him

A few years ago I worked at a restaurant and we had kind of an annoying new hire. One of those, "I'm too good for this types". It was this kid's first job and first day out of training. One of his tables was a family with two small children, who were being obnoxious, but hey, it's a family restaurant that's expected. While walking away from the table he muttered something along the lines of, "shut up your kids". Except he didn't actually mutter, he spoke at a normal volume. The mother overheard and was not pleased. He was sent home, and invited to not return.

Easy Peasy

I once had an employee snap chatting as he drove an ambulance with a crew member and patient in the back, through an intersection during a red light.

Anger Management

He slashed my tire after I told him to go work instead of sitting in the break room.

A Real Dog

Rubbing a pregnant co-worker's belly 3 times after being asked to stop and then asking her if her husband was "good".

I fired him and he asked if we could still be friends. (No) He then tried to file for unemployment after only working there for 3 weeks, part time.

Training Day

One of our delivery drivers was supposed to be training a new employee, basically driving around and introduce them to routes and customers and that type of thing.

Well, he told the new driver to just drop him off at the park down the street and when my boss drives the 15 seconds to the park, he was smoking with bums.


I was part of a group of IT contractors together for a large international project. The client would get us apartments to live in at each implementation site for 6-12 months. A member of my team got into a disagreement with the Chief Technology Officer when he came to visit our site, which resulted in her screaming personal attacks at him in the hallway when he tried to step outside to de-escalate the argument. She was fired on the spot, but then proceeded to go back to the apartment provided by the company and completely wreck it. The site was in the middle of the desert and she had opened all of the windows/doors, turned the AC on max, stopped all of the drains and turned the water on, threw red nail polish all over the bathroom... it was the most extreme breakdown in a professional environment I'd ever seen.

8 Glasses per Day

Had an employee who was drinking on the job. Snuck vodka in a plastic water bottle. We became suspicious when she began behaving erratically. Then we noticed that the was super possessive of her bottle and never let it leave her sight or let anyone else near it. She messed up and left it at her desk when she went to the bathroom, so we sniffed it and she was busted. Hot mess, that woman was.

Evading Arrest

A co-worker of mine who was a little bit too into his car got snapped doing twice the speed limit. Instead of pulling over for the patrol car behind him, he decided to run for it. He led a police chase to the office and shook them off by hiding in the underground parking.

The GM watched it happen from his office. He took the lift down, found co-worker's car and told him not to bother getting out.


Had an employee pass out in his truck in a customers driveway. Customer called me to report, said employee had a glass pipe on his chest. Luckily guy decides to call me instead of the sherrif. Employee was picked up and brought back to shop.

When asked what was going on he stated, "I was on break, it wasn't weed it just Spice"

Sorry bud, I don't think this is gonna work out.

Identity Theft

My husband is a manager and his employee some how had another employees I.D and then stole that persons check and cashed it.

Caught it All on camera.

She still denied it.

Taking a Break

Worked as a bartender at a restaurant. I was cashing out a waitress who decided to enter the bar to "make herself a smoothie". After fumbling around she dropped a wine glass from the hanger and it smashed all over the counter. I told her she's gonna need to clean that up before I can finish cashing her out. She then begged me that she needs her tips right now as her friend who she owes money to is waiting outside and that she was going to deliver the money, come back and clean it up. She never came back and i had to replace all the ice and all the fruit garnishes on a busy weekend night because of broken bits of glass that landed all over. Of course the manager comes over to ask why the drink tickets are 10 minutes long and I told him what happened, who then immediately went into the schedule and gave all her future shifts away to others. The waitress called the restaurant not even 5 minutes later to ask why her shifts have been forcibly given away and the manager replied "cause you're fired" and hung up.


I had a (security) officer under me. He was reported in a tree. I went to investigate the last place he was seen. He was still there, attempting to pepper spray birds. I wish I could have made that up.

He was on his way back to his post but still near where it happened. I approached him and questioned him. He denied all, of course. I lead him to the office and had him watch the entire session of him climbing and spraying. He merely said, "That's not me." And I was done. Ordered him to return his equipment and fired him.

Beaver Tale

I worked at a golf course during the summer as a lead instructor for golf camps and we just hired 2 high school guys to help out. Each day I usually go through a small teaching session and then let them out the course to play. So I get through the lesson and send groups out to different holes. I told them I would watch over holes 1-5 and they watch over 6-9. So I gave them their own cart(big mistake on my end) to navigate quicker from hole to hole. Everything was going smooth until about an hour later, when one of the kids came up to me and said there were dirt trails all over #8 green. I take my cart over to inspect it and sure enough, these kids were doing burnouts and drifting on the green. Now I'm irate, and want to go confront these kids. I head back down the fairway towards hole 7 to find these guys and I kid you not, they are literally chasing a beaver around in their golf cart. A f'ing beaver, on a course with literally no ponds and water traps. How this beaver got there, I have no idea but what I do know is that these two got fired immediately after that.

We decided not to hire anymore high school kids after this fiasco.

Extreme Reaction

Years back a co-worker got into some trouble for something and got called into the owners office. Few minutes later you hear a huge thump, idiot broke his hand on the bosses desk during their disagreement. He got a police escort off the property.


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