People wanted to talk about how they’d been fired, or how some companies fire people. So fire away.
I’ve never really been fired, but the time closest to it was dignified for both parties. A friend and co-worker, though, defaced the website in a few suble ways on his way out. I tried to convince him not to, but I wasn’t about to tell them that it happened or who did it because I wasn’t happy with them either.
OK, everybody who think’s they’ve still got a job here take one step forward CAUGHT@WORK WHERE THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING ?
Oh, I see what you mean now … sorry.
It’s happened twice.
First time, I got laid off because company wanted to down size, wasn’t too bad since I had a part-time job and the boss there let me work full-time until I found another mechanics’ job.
Second time was because I got pregnant and my boss didn’t want a pregnant mechanic, nor did he want to let me work in the office during the latter part of the pregnancy. Could I have sued? Probably. Could I have won? Maybe. Did I want to sue? No, because the auto industry in Hawaii is pretty tight where I might have been labeled a “shit stirrer.” It might have made trouble for me down the road when I am ready to enter the workforce again. Plus I had that other part-time job still yet, so again, the boss let me have full-time hours. Right now my SO makes enough where I can stay home, so I’ve lucked out big-time.
Part of my previous job was to retreive and respond to e-mails for my bosses. One day I came across an e-mail one had sent the other in reference to someone they had interviewed for my job. I printed it out and put it in front of Boss 2, who turned white and began to stammer.
I embarrassed them into a good severance package. :wally’s
I know of a case where a VP was caught with a seckaterry on his desk after hours–by a Building Security employee (also employed by the same company. At the time, both were still married to other people, but separated.
The employee who caught them, as well as all the management of the Building Security department “left the company” soon afterwards. Not really a firing, but. . .
And, to quote Jimmy Durante, of all the ironies, this has to be the ironest: The VP who was caught now gives annual seminars on *“proper employee behavior” which is manadatory for continued employment. That is, if you don’t go to one of the seminars, you are terminated.
*Stuff like. . .
Don’t steal company property
Don’t litter/pollute.
Don’t drink or buy alcohol if you’re wearing the company logo
Don’t be a racist
Don’t sexually harass
Use good financial practices, such as: It’s bad economics to spend $2000 on a new desk, and 30,000 a year to decorate it.
Man see here I was thinking these would be funny stories.
I have a few, mainly from co-workers over the year.
-Got fired after sucker punching the CEO’s wife
-Caught having sex with a corpse (worked in a morgue)
-Spelling out, “I didn’t wash my hands” in pepperoni in the pizza you made
-Wearing a button that says, “Sodomy isn’t just for home, its for work!” instead of your nametag.
-Getting caught urinating in your bosses file cabinate.
That must have been a very large pizza.
Oh, goody! Now I can tell my exciting story…
My wife (at the time) and I took a trip to Galveston for a week. When we got back home Friday evening, I had an urgent message from one of my co-workers (also a good friend) asking me to call as soon as I got in. Thinking he was in an accident or something, I called back. “We got laid off”, he tells me. The announcement had been made that morning. Ok, I haven’t heard anything, so they’ll probably outline everything to me Monday morning, right? “No, you don’t understand,” my friend tells me, “they told us this morning that as of 5pm today, we are laid off. They were changing the locks on the doors as we were leaving.” “!!!”
So…
Not only was I NOT notified by this company that I no longer had a job, (see, there’s these things called telephones )I wasn’t given the opportunity to go to the office & get any of my personal stuff. I actually had to hunt down my manager at home to find out about my severance pay. I would have been totally in the dark had my friend not contacted me. I guess they figured I would get the point when I showed up Monday & my key didn’t work in the door.
Well, kinda stole my thunder, MachV, but my worst firing was coming home from work and having a message on my answering machine telling me not to come in tomorrow cause I’m fired. We’ll courier your stuff to you. Rat bastards. And this was one week after I had surgery, and two weeks after I took possession of my very first house, bought all by myself. Rat fink bastards. They contributed greatly to one of the worst years of my life (but I’m much better now, thank you.)
My previous job (it happened to a fellow employee):
John is walking past his boss’ office.
Boss: “John, come in here a sec?”
John: “Sure.”
Boss: “See that empty box over there? Do me a favor and take it back to your office.”
John: “OK. But it’s empty, what should I do with it?”
Boss: “Oh. It’s for your personal things. You’re fired and security is waiting in your office to escort you out.”
John: “What? You’re joking.”
Boss: “Oh yeah? Go to your office and check for yourself.”
Mind you, John did absolutely nothing wrong and had exemplary reviews for years. He just happened to be making too much money when departmental expenses were getting squeezed. What an insensitive way to get rid of a good worker. And his wife had just quit her job because of a difficult pregnancy. We tried to convince him to file a wrongful termination lawsuit, but we’re not sure if he went through with it. Oh well, that’s Corporate America for you.
once, long ago, i worked (for a short time) for a company that activly sought-out people with college degrees to train as managers. fine so far. they hired me with my fantastic degree from a prestigious school, then stuck me with 2 ex-infantryman, one of which was dishonarably discharged and expected them to train me for management! Now, remember, these guys knew that they would never be promoted to management, and didn’t care too much about training any “kolage kid”. (seems there was a eensy-weensy bit of a social/cultural/ethnic/economic clash going on here)
well, I was doin’ pretty well and learning as much as i could despite who i was learning from. this one guy would take the company van and go out and smoke dope, the other guy (who i was riding with) was fooling around with about 4 different women on the route, and i would end up going to lunch at odd hours or just waiting for him in the van, listening to the freakin’ AM radio (god, i hate AM radio!).
well, one day his wife walks in the store looking for him! Hell, I didn’t know he was married. I told the lady he was out to lunch with “Pauline”. She goes balistic and takes it out on me! She goes into some pretty good histronics, and I just walk away…
…i get called into the bosses office that afternoon and am imformed that i am fired for “making racist comments” to this jackoffs wife!
I would have sooooooo hated that job anyway, and i went on to bigger and better things soon after anyway. it was amusing while it lasted.
Well, I used to work for a big software company that produced finacial software. I was doing tech support. A note, I was actually working for a temp company but all my bosses worked for the main company and I never talked to anyone at the temp company except when I was hired. Anyway after about 9 months I was due to be hired by the main company.
Then the weekend from hell happened. I drove down to the lake to meet my parents, a three hour drive, and on the way back the my car died in middle of nowhere about two hours outside Albuquerque. I finally got a ride to the nearest truckstop and tried to get a hold of someone to tow my car. Since I was the middle of nowhere no towing company would help. I then tried to find someone to come out and didn’t get a hold of anyone until about 10 PM. (My parents and other people I went to the lake with didn’t stop at the truckstop like they usually do on their was back) So I got back in town about 1 AM and I had to be at work at 6 AM. When I got into town I called my parents and they loaned me a truck so I could get to work. I got home at about 2 AM and slept until 5 and then went off to work. I was exactly 5 minutes late getting to work on that Monday. During my breaks I made some calls and found someone who would tow my car back, the kicker, I had to be there when they picked up the car. So I went to my boss, who worked for the main company, and told her the situation and asked if I could leave at noon on the next day. She said yes, no problem.
So on Tuesday I took off at noon and on my way out there my parents car died, a water hose broke. Thankfully it happened right outside ABQ. I called my parents and they came out with the hose and I fixed the car and made it to the truckstop. The tow guy was late but showed up and we got my car on it’s way. On the way back in my parents car another water hose broke, it turned out that the doohicky that regulated the water temp was broken. Anyway, long story short I got home at about midnight on Tuesday.
I went in to work the next day at 6 am and about 8 my boss came over and started talking to me which was sort of strange. She was a great boss but she was always busy and the only time I really talked to her was at meetings, during my reviews or on break. About 9 AM I got an email telling me that the HR person wanted to see me. I thought cool, they are finally going to hire me on. WOO! HOO! a raise!
I went to the normal HR area and they re-directed me to the temp HR area. I met some woman who I had never seen before. At this point she informed me that I was being dismissed for being late or missing part of a shift 3 times in 6 months. She pulled out my record that showed I was late twice, 2 and 5 minutes in each case, and that I had taken time off the previous day. I pointed out to her that the first time I was late was because the card scanner used to enter the building broke that day and everyone was late and that I had asked for and recieved permission to leave early from my boss. She said it didn’t matter and handed me a box. At this point a security guard showed up to escort me to my desk. I packed my stuff and left. I then bought an 18 pack of beer at 9 in the morning and got loaded.
The next day I got an email from my boss and she said she had no idea that I was going to be let go when gave me permission to take half the day off. About two months later she offered me a job with the company bypassing the temp crap. I turned her down because I was still sore about the issue and had found a better job.
Six months later the company closed the call center due to budget over runs.
Slee
During a labor dispute in 1995 (OK, we went out on strike), I got a job through a temp labor company. It was a drop shipping company for cheap crap made in China. You may have seen ads for companies like these, you print and send your own catalogs and the customers send their orders to the drop shipper. The drop shipper sends the stuff and the entrepenuer makes money. The “foreman”, Jackie, was a 21 year old punk that thought he knew what he was doing. From the first day he rode me and another union brother about out union views and how he was more superior than the rest of the employees of the company. The morning of my third day there he was giving me a bunch of crap while I was pulling stock while on a WAVE lift. A WAVE lift is a battery operated lift for reaching items up to 30 feet high. The lift was as high as it would go and I had a box of small ceramic jars. I took the box and dropped it. It missed him by about 3 feet but broke everything in the box. He started yelling at me to get down and that I was going to be fired. I took another box of them and tossed it in his direction. Again, another crash to the floor. By now about 10 other folks had gathered around to watch. I dropped the lift to the second level of the 3 tiered shelving and grabbed an open box. It was full of plaster paris Christmas ornaments and I started throwing them at the kid. The people watching were cheering me on. I never tried to hit him, I probably couldn’t because I was laughing so hard. By the time I dropped the lift all the way down he had ran off looking for Warren, his step father that owned the company.
I went to the lunch room and grabbed my jacket to leave when Warren came in. He was laughing. He told me he saw the whole thing and that he was going to have to fire me. But, he said if he had his choice the would fire Jackie and let me run the place but he didn’t want to piss off his wife. It was her money that financed the company. He paid me for the whole day then a few weeks later sent me a turkey for Thanksgiving. That was a fun way to be fired.
Working on a project for 2 years (been at the job for 6). As the deadline closed in, worked extra hard to finish up early even though the contract gave another 2 weeks, just to meet an arbitrary deadline of the customer.
My boss calls me into his office. I figure it’s to update on the last few details of the schedule (minor cleanup paperwork) and maybe figure out what I’m working on next. His boss is there. Should have been a warning, but I didn’t catch on.
They turn to me and tell me they’re letting me go. There isn’t any new work coming in, so they don’t have anything for me to do. This is the first of November. I did get a month’s notice, and a decent severance package.
The kicker - the next day I was driving to my sister’s to help with her wedding that weekend. Get to see a large number of the extended family, all asking, “So how’s that job going?”
Not so long before I left my last casual job (voluntarily), the CEO decided to revamp the service team. Unfortunately, said CEO spent most of his time in his office and only had a very vague idea of how things ran out on the floor. He wanted to get rid of a whole lot of the casual staff (including some great people who, because they were students, could only work one or two days per week) and rather than actually telling them they were fired, he directed the supervisor simply to leave them off next month’s roster.
Of course, the supervisor wasn’t very happy about this idea, and when she couldn’t persuade the CEO to do things differently, she offered her resignation. She gave a month’s notice, so that the centre would have time to employ someone else or at least organise interim measures, but the CEO told her that if she was leaving, she should leave immediately and to go pack up her office. Rather than advertise for someone to take her place, he then told another staff member (who had previously worked in a completely different area) to take over the supervisor’s responsibilities on top of her existing workload.
The whole place was a mess for a month or two after that, and the remaining staff were all quite upset. The vast majority of us had always been very committed to our jobs and the organisation, and it was really distressing to find out how little we casuals were valued by the administration. It was certainly a major factor influencing me to leave, and the incident has left a rather nasty taste in my mouth.
Sorry to have been a bit vague here - I live in a small-ish city, and just on the offchance, I don’t want to say anything that might incriminate me or anyone else.
Well all of youse are complete do-do’s 'cos the idea is to never hang around in the same job long enough to be laid off!
Ya got it? The idea of ‘loyalty to the company’ died a sad death when companies decided it was ethical to lay-off workers when they were not adding substantially to the profit margin. Fuck the worker, they are expendable, so why on earth are you complaining about the WAY you were told to fuck off?
That you were dismissed in ITSELF should be enough to get your blood boiling!!
ok…kambuckta slinks away with her little marxist tirade, and her socialist pork-chops (thanks Sam Orr…)
At my last company, we all knew it was in financial difficulty but the CEO assured us we would have a months warning if we had to shut down. So I get a call at home saying they just pulled the plug and everyone is laid off as of tomorrow. I was scheduled to work that night. I asked “why the hell should I come in then?” They said I wouldn’t get my severance.
I got laid off from a Major IT company about 8 months ago (Ross Perot founded it, if that’s any help).
The almost-ex-wife and I had decided that we were better off divorcing. Then, that day, my friend came by and told me I was gonna get axed at the end of the week.
I took the rest of the week off.
When I got in on Monday, they took me aside after I logged in and got everyone going. They announced that as part of a companywide cost cutting measure, I was gone.
I walked back up to get my soda and announced to the entire control room “I’ve been fired!”.
What were they gonna do, fire me?
The cool thing was the fact that they had extra security on hand for little old me. Get caught doing sword forms on the back dock once…
small biomed company i was working part time for while in college… they had a habit of not paying for all the hours their college employees would put in. so i decided to, ahem, compensate for their oversight in the next month after they missed some hours. you know, a few extra hours here and there on the timelog. then i just stopped going a la Office Space. i came in about a month after that to see if i had a paycheck waiting… well, to make a long story short, they didn’t pay me for my “hours” and my name had been removed from the company bulletin board. a de facto firing i suppose. didn’t work out at all like in the movie (=
just stopped
In a now closed thread, someone mentioned, on Take Your Daughter to Work Day, you get laid off in front of your daughter. Or better yet, your boss brings his daughter in and lets her fire you.
Never actually happened to me, but that would be an undiginified way to do it.