Sheesh.
I’ve quit first once*, and I’ve had a gentleman’s agreement that I was “laid off” when I was in fact, fired once, and I’ve been actually fired once.
The time I was actually fired was mostly my fault for what actually happened, and 100% not my fault for the reason they gave for firing me.
I was 17, it was my first job, I was working the night shift in a truck stop in the middle of BFE Mississippi all by myself. That’s a receipe for disaster all on it’s own, and then add to that the fact that my grandfather was a high level manager in the company.
The part that was my fault: Counting up my drawer, I was $100 short. Could. Not. Find. It. No idea where it could be, was pretty sure it was a check I cashed earlier in the night.
The part that was utter BS: I was accused of stealing the money, which I did not. My grandfather was called in to take me to have a lie detector test. I know now that those aren’t accurate or useful, but at the time I was upset and terrified. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, but geez, I’m 17, my grandfather is looking all grim and upset, I’ve been working an actual job for a matter of weeks and…yeah, I was hysterical. And flunked the test.
The upshot? Some years later they tore down and remodled the area that I worked - AND THE CHECK WAS FOUND BEHIND THE COUNTER! It had somehow slipped into a small crack between the back of the counter and the wall. Yeah, possibly my fault for not handling it more carefully, but still.
Grandaddy never has apologised.
- Quit first as in “fuck you, I quit” “you can’t quit, you’re fired!” - this from a guy who had been in my face a day previously, screaming at me that I’d brought him the wrong phone book. Screaming as in I wiped spital off my glasses…ack!
There are a few others (which mostly involve bosses or customers lying to me or about me), but the one that took the case was when I was fired – over the phone, over the weekend – for not putting in enough time at the office.
The reason – which they were well aware of – was that I was taking time off for chemotherapy. The topper: when I explained to them, before chemo started, what my oncologist told me to expect from treatment – which included things like cumulative side effects (I’d be less functional as treatment wore on) and the possibility that the chemo would compromise my immune system to the degree that a cold could land me unexpectedly in the hospital and/or kill me – bossman told me he “wouldn’t penalize me for being sick,” and that he wasn’t “even going to keep track of my sick leave.”
I half suspect that they justified it to themselves by telling themselves it was laziness instead of illness, because I wore a wig and didn’t see much point in continually bitching about how much pain I was in (which was a lot, and constantly).
(And yes, I did try to find a lawyer. Every single one I talked to told me “Well, I can’t tell you that you won’t win, but are you suuuuurre you want to pursue this?”)
If you don’t count the “I-quit-No-you’re-fired-No-I-quit” things, just once. Unjustly, although I can sort of see it.
I had this job. I was moving on the weekend–this was when I was young and moving could be done on a weekend 'cause I didn’t have that much stuff. My boss knew I was moving.
On Monday, due to the stress of moving, I had a fever and a really sore throat and felt Just Awful. I also didn’t have a phone yet. In order to call in sick, I would have to get up, get dressed, and go out into the cold to find a pay phone. It just didn’t seem worth it so I went back to bed.
The next day when the installer showed up with my phone he took one look at me and said he wasn’t risking those germs, and he left without installing my phone! Later that day a friend came by, and I asked her to call in for me, and she did.
I finally recovered enough on Thursday to go into the office, and I got fired. For not calling in.
That’s why I say I can see it. I can understand when someone doesn’t call in.
On the other hand, when somebody is really, really sick, getting bundled up to go out and make one stupid phone call seems like asking too much, and I did have a friend call as soon as she could.
Boss had my new address if he was that concerned, and he would then have also known I was really, truly sick.
A few years later he ran for office. I volunteered for the opposition and we defeated the jerk.
I’m really not sure. I was working for a complete asshole. He called me into his office one day, and explained to me how in future I would be working on a commission only basis. Hell no. I left that day.
During the next week most of his other staff quit or got fired. I got a call from him asking me to go back. I did cash in hand for a few weeks for him before leaving for another job. I loved those last few weeks. I didn’t wear my uniform. I helped myself drinks. I turned up late, used the sun beds without paying. Asshole boss didn’t call me on a single thing. In fact he asked me to go back permanently.
I would like to point out I’m not normally like that. I’m an excellent employee. But the guy I was working for, was such an ass I felt justified behaving the way I did.
I got whacked at Lehman Bros Hong Kong. Not quite sure why, except it was the 4th sales manager that year and they needed to cut costs. I worked for the bitch from hell, who was carrying on an affair with the big boss (who obviously had is fuck you money and was newly divorced). Big boss quit, bitch from hell didn’t show up. Big Boss’ right hand man took over for a few weeks, and then quit to join big boss at another firm. Bitch from hell never resigned, and for some reason Lehman’s didn’t want to fire her. Eventually, promoted a sales guy to the big boss position. I made a play for a promotion to a different group (selling converts), went on vacation, came back for a day. got a call at 5:00 from HR saying “could you come by for a minute?”
I did, new boss was there, and that was about it.
I fucking hated those Lehman shitheads, and felt zero regret when Dick Fuld and the rest of those east coast prep school fucktards went bankrupt.
I’ve been fired from a number of jobs, largely due to personality clashes or internal politics. You get used to it after a while.
The fact I don’t get on with my bosses is part of the reason I’ve gone back to Uni; I need to be able to work for myself and that’s not going to happen in my chosen field unless I get some tertiary qualifications under my belt.
Once when I was working in a supermarket when I was a teenager. I had a sinus infection. It got better and I stopped taking the antibiotics halfway through. It came back and hit me hard during the middle of my shift. I had to leave due to the high fever. I was in bed for a few days. While I was in bed they scheduled me for a couple of shifts. I was fired.
I was temping at a very large insurance company in the mailroom. I was not asked back after the initial assignment. I have no idea why. Everyone got their mail. I know I was slow but it was a huge building (actually three buildings together, each with 4 floors) everyone was slow until they could figure out the layout. The mailroom had all the cool guys and I guess I wasn’t cool enough for them. The next temp job I got very quickly turned into a permenant position at twice the money and my future wife was in the cubicle in front of me. The cool guys were still pushing their mail carts. It worked out just fine.
Pull up a chair, sit a spell. Get a cup o’ coffee; this could take a while. A while back I counted them up, and I’ve held at least 30 different jobs (I’m old and my memory isn’t that great; it may have been more) since I was 15 years old. Most were shit jobs to cover bills while I worked on my art “career”, and I was fired from at least 7-8 of them.
In 2-3 cases, I was fired for saying—and I’m paraphrasing here—“You don’t have the balls to fire me!” It turned out that they did.
I worked for a pet store and as the newby was expected to clean all the cages and fish tanks. Which I happily did, because I’d rather spend time with a bunch of rodents then my co-workers. I was fired by the store manager because I didn’t have as many sales as the rest of the employees. Employees who didn’t spend 3/4 of they time cleaning cages.
StG
I had a similar problem at my last job in electronics retail; as the Assistant Manager I had to fix most of the fuck-ups and problems, deal with refunds, and generally do all the shit that the Store Manager was too busy to do and the Sales Staff didn’t have the computer authority or inclination to do- which left bugger all time for making sales, which led to getting chewed out every week for not having Incredible Sales Results.
If I ever own my own retail store I won’t be setting budgets- sell whatever you can and as long as we’re making a profit you can all keep your jobs and I won’t bother you too much. Yes, I can dream…
I got fired once. It was sort of my fault.
I was working at a gas station. The official rule from corporate, was that if a customer tipped us or just overpaid, we couldn’t keep it. It went into the till and the company got to keep it. My manager didn’t enforce this rule, though, and let us keep the money. Usually it was someone in a hurry who would give a $20 for $19.xx in gas and didn’t want to wait for change.
So one evening I’m working the night shift by myself. A guy comes in and says “4 dollars on pump 5”, throws some ones on the counter, and runs back out to his car. I pick up the ones, and there’s $6 dollars there. I go ahead and set the pump for $6 prepay, thinking maybe I misheard him. He stops pumping at $4 and drives away. I shrug and pocket the extra $2. I refunded the $2 off of the gas pump board, and put “customer overpaid” as the refund reason.
The problem: When I counted down my till at the end of my shift, it came up even. When the next person to use my till counted it down at the beginning of his shift, it was $10 short. I still don’t know what happend to the $10. Maybe I somehow lost it (gave someone the wrong change or something?) and miscounted at the end of my shift. Maybe the next guy miscounted at the beginning of his shift and it was never missing at all. Maybe he pocketed it. I don’t know.
Either way, corporate reviewed the security tapes to investigate the shortage and saw me pocket something from the register. The video quality wasn’t good enough to tell that it was 2 one dollar bills, and not a ten dollar bill. I explained what happened to my manager. She verified my story by checking further back in the tape to see the guy throw his money and run off, and watch me refund the money off the pump board, and checked the refund slip. Corporate didn’t care, since even if that were true I was still breaking the rules. So my manager had to fire me. She gave me a really good reference for my next job though since she didn’t really agree with the firing.
So it was sort of my fault, because I was technically breaking the rules.
I’ve been fired three times, and I’m still not sure if one of them was justified. The other two clearly and blatantly were not.
The first one, I was working for the USFS as a paid intern during high school. It was actually my second summer as a paid intern - and my boss told me to my face and in so many words that he was firing me purely on account of my gender. He said “Men work harder than women, so I’m firing you so I can hire Eric here”. He was (and remains) a shithead. A large stink was raised, my job was offered back to me, and I declined on the basis that I didn’t want to have to deal with him. Since I was 16 at the time, I was happy enough to take another random summer job and give my former boss dirty looks whenever I ran across him. Turns out he fired me mostly because a) he’s a true misogynist and b) my dad had pissed him off.
The second one (the one I’m confused about) I was fired for failing to live up to the expectations of my manager. Which might be true, actually. Since I don’t know (and wasn’t told, despite asking repeatedly) what those expectations were, it’s totally possible I failed to live up to them. It was a part-time college job - and one where I was given some cursory training (and by cursory, I mean less than a week’s worth of training - which, when the job involves handling and packaging for shipment and eventual dispoal of hazardous waste materials, definitely counts as “cursory”) and then they just said “go to it”. There were three sites, I was expected to divide my own time and given precisely zero actual supervision. As a 19-year-old hazardous materials technician. In retrospect, they’re damn lucky I didn’t get anyone killed - including myself. I was devestated to be fired and to this day can’t actually figure out what the hell I didn’t do that I was supposed to. It’s possible my schedule for packing and shipping materials wasn’t as aggressive as they’d have preferred - but nobody ever mentioned anything to me or made any suggestions as to how they thought I should be doing my job.
The third time, my immediate supervisor (who was also a personal friend - we got to be friends after I started working there actually) was fired for making a gentle protest against the sexual harassment of her immediate supervisor.* The supervisor immediately fired her, and then fired me purely because we were friends. We’re *still *friends, actually. It’s been almost fifteen years, and we’re still the best of friends. We responded by going out for dinner and finding new jobs. And then laughing like fiends when the company went under less than three months later because the supervisor had fired us.
It was actually the direct cause of the buisness failing. It was a research firm, and my best friend was the manager of the data department and I was her assistant manager. The guy my best friend had replaced as manager had quit several months before, the lady they hired to replace him was the supervisor who’d done the harassing and who hadn’t yet gotten around to learning how to actually do the mechanics of the job. She hadn’t acquired the technical skills required (we used proprietary software), and that failure to acquire skills had been a deliberate decision on her part. She then fired the only two people in the firm who actually possessed the technical skills required. The company missed every deadline for data production they had for the next month - and by then, their clients had found other outfits who could actually produce what they promised. What few clients stuck around left when it came out that, rather than actually learning the job, the supervisor was just making up the data. Oh, how we laughed.
*Weirdly, all the people involved were women. My friend’s immediate supervisor was doing things like discussing, in great detail and disturbing imagery precisely what sexual acts she would like to perform with her male subordinates - over and over and over, even after my friend indicated that the situation was making her uncomfortable. As far as I know, the supervisor didn’t actually ever say anything to the male subordinates directly. She also did things like ask my friend “If you could fuck any of the guys here, who would it be?” and said things like “I would just love to spank his cute little ass and make him lick my pussy for hours” about one of our married co-workers. Not once - many times, every single day.
I’ve been fired from 2 paying jobs, both of which were during my college years.
The first was when I worked at UPS. Initially I was hired to wash the delivery trucks every night, but after the christmas season was over, I got moved to unloading packages from semi trailers… Starting at midnight and going until 4:00 AM… and being on call. I was slow at this job and never could improve my package rate and being on call made it difficult for me find motivation to call in to see if they needed me. So one night I called in and was told to report in, but I took my time getting there. I was fired. Yeah, it was my fault, but the job really sucked and I wanted out anyways.
The other time was when I was a waiter at a restaurant nearby where my roommate had been working. I will be the first to admit that this was a tough job and I absolutely sucked at it. I had a hard time multitasking, consistently got orders wrong, and was slow. So one day after the college semester had just ended, I showed up to work and promptly got fired.
I have been involuntarily terminated only once, when the company suddenly ran short on money and closed its doors and had to let everybody go. Nothing to do with my performance. Every other job, I’ve left by choice, on my own terms.
Ditto what Bruce Wayne said. Dish, boyo.
I was fired from a college temp job because I accidently busted an injection molding machine by sending molten plastic pouring everywhere. Which then, of course, hardened in place.
I was also fired from high school job at a Yogurt store. Basically I worked there with a bunch of friends from high school and the manager was never around and when he was he didn’t care. We would steal yogurt wholesale or generally just waste it by making giant waffle cones we would never eat. Some of our friends would show up drunk or high while we were working and just annoy the customers.
One time we got bored and put party ballons over the faucets in the big basin sink and turned them on. Well the manager shows up while we are tending to a customer and heads to the back. We had forgotten about our “experiment” until we hear him explain “WHAT THE FUCK!!” We go running into the back and the balloons are now about 2 feet in diameter and full of water. As if on cue, they explode and send water everywhere. He looks at me and I’m like “um…yeah the sink’s been doing that all morning.” He just tells us to “clean it up” and leaves.
Another time, they decided they wanted to offer hot soup as a new “winter” product. Well, my buddy and I are watching the store and of course there are almost no customers the entire night. Except we have been trying the soup all night and basically finish half a gallon of clam chowder with nothing to show for it in the register. Se we hear a knock as the manager comes in to count the register and my friend starts freaking out because he’s going to figure out we ate all this chowder without paying for it. I say “relax, I got it covered”. I take pick up the mop and knock the whole thing off the counter. Boss comes in and I’m like “man, I’m sorry. I was mopping the floor and accidently knocked over the soup thingy.” Once again, he just tells us to “clean it up” and leaves.
Eventually they hired some bitch to be our permenant manager. She could have fired me probably for any number of things but mostly it was because she was a bitter cunt. And unfortunately she did it over the phone so there was no retaliation. Well later I did go in there and buy a medium cup of choclate with caramel topping (very hard to clean), dumped in on the floor in front of her, gave her the finger and said “best $1.55 I ever spent!”
One of my other friends had the best exit though. He accidently turned on a machine and let it run all night leaving a giant pile of yogurt. So the next morning he got fired once he came in. He’s like “fine bitch!” storms out the door and peals off in his T-bird (it was the 80s). Well, the tire kicks up a piece of pavement right into the big main window shattering it. That was pretty awesome.
But basically she fired everyone within a few weeks. Even the people who didn’t do anything wrong.
I worked in a food plant during summer break my last two years of high school. After I graduated I worked that summer and then told them I wanted to stay as a full time employee. The place was union and the deal was when you were a full time employee (not summer help) that you were a probationary for 30 days and if you survived you got in the union. My mistake was that I hung around with a crowd that were slackers, potheads and also very prone to abusing the union greivance procedures. They had union protection, I didn’t and on my 29th day I got canned. I got another factory job pretty quick but it sucked and a year and a half later I went back to the food place and applied as though I’d never been there. They hired me back ( I don’t recall an interveiw, I think they just called and said start Mon.) I made it in the union and stayed til the whole place closed a couple years later.
Adjusted for inflation, it’s still the best paying job I ever had.
Wow you showed her. It probably made her cry when she told one of your former coworkers to clean it up.
One of the reasons I went to college and grad school was that my experience working crap jobs in high school and college basically taught me that the crappier the job, the more petty and pedantic the management will treat their employees. Granted what you did could be technically construed as stealing from the company and they are right to have a zero tolerance policy. However what does keeping a $2 overcharge compare to charging steak dinners and trips to the strip club back to your clients?
I think she was alone in the store, otherwise she wouldn’t have been tending the register herself. By the time I left, business was pretty bad (surprisingly) and there usually wasn’t more than one or two people on shift.
Besides, I was like 16 or something, so why don’t you step off?