Are you 16 now? I don’t think I’ve heard anyone use that term since high school. Just a guess but I don’t think you’ll find too many people that empathize with you on this one.
Once, but it didn’t stick. I was in high school and on Sundays I would work for the restaurant in a retirement community. I’d been there about six months and didn’t yet have the super special maroon apron or name tag, not that I really cared. I asked for one particular Sunday off for a family thing. My supervisor said it was fine and asked me to write the date down and give it to her so she wouldn’t forget, which I did. The Sunday after the family thing, I came in to find my name no longer on the schedule. I asked why and the supervisor said I’d been fired because I hadn’t shown up for work the previous week… as soon as I reminded her I’d asked for it off, in writing, I was hired back on, given a maroon apron AND the next week I got my name tag. 
I didn’t stay there very long after that, but I left on my terms.
I’ve been involuntarily terminated twice, but both times were layoffs, so they don’t count.
However, DogDad has been fired from one job. He was working for some fast-food corp and they did a weekly shift schedule that ran Sunday - Saturday.
He worked Saturday 2nd shift, 1-10 or some such, and the scheduling manager didn’t have the next weeks’ schedule up yet. It was supposed to be up by Friday, but hardly EVER was. He routinely had to call in on Sunday night or Monday morning to see if he was working on Monday.
Anyway, by the time he got off work Sunday night it still wasn’t done, and he asked the scheduling manager whether he would be scheduled for Monday, and when he should call to find out the schedule.
Manager told him that oh, just call Monday after 9, and don’t worry about it because he wouldn’t be scheduled for open-up shift on Monday anyway.
You guessed it - the phone rang at five thirty in the fucking morning. It was the Manager, asking him why the hell he wasn’t there for his scheduled Monday open-up shift and by the way you’re fired for not coming in.
We had a bit of gleeful vengeance, though - less than a month later the restaurant was shut down for a couple months by the Health Department…and then permanently shut down by the Health Department shortly after they re-opened.
Back in the early 90s, I worked as a Medical Assistant in a doctor’s office with four other medical Assistants. The “higher up” MA was fired (justly deserved–she struck another employee and was lucky she wasn’t arrested), and another MA was hired. Then a few months later, the “next higher up” MA was fired (can’t recall why, but I do recall being confused as to why), with another MA hired. A few months later, the third “higher up” MA was fired, and another MA was hired.
17 years later, I look back and see the pattern, but then, I was really confused when I was called into the office and told I was being terminated for “abuse of sick leave”–even though I’d taken only two days off the entire year and had several days of sick leave coming. (which they paid me for) I found out later that the other MA’s hired were hired in making $5 less an hour than I was making. As the MA’s worked their way up to pay increases, they were fired for one reason or another when the Drs. office could hire someone else at making way less money. ($5/hr difference was a lot of money back then.)
The state unemployment office were rather confused as to why I was fired as well. I filed for unemployment, the Drs. office denied it, so a hearing was scheduled. Afterwards, my unemployment checks started coming.
It turned out to be a good thing for me, since I started college shortly thereafter and never looked back.
I find it difficult to care whether strangers on the internet “empathize” with something I did as an immature teenager. It’s more of a “stupid shit we did when we were young” story.
Clearly most of us should have been fired for the way we acted. The fact that this particular manager was also somewhat of a mean bitch is somewhat besides the point.
I do find it a bit strange that you seem to take some sort of personal offense at it.
I think I was fired once.
I was in college working for Fanny Farmer. I got a new job and gave two weeks notice. I worked those two weeks and shortly before my last day a new schedule went up and I was still on it. I told the manager I’d given notice and wouldn’t be working those days. She said she needed me to work those days. She just kept saying she needed me to work those days and I kept saying that my last day was Thursday…
Thursday came. I worked. I punched out. I was still on the schedule. I never went back.
A few years later I wanted to pick up a little extra cash and applied for a part time holiday shift at Fanny Farmer. They interviewed me, but couldn’t hire me because my previous record showed I’d been fired for not showing up for my shift.
Retail storefront management and fast food do seem to be the domains of the petty tyrant.
No personal offense. I was just confused by what seemed to be a lack of understanding on your part about how much you deserved to be fired. This post cleared it up. “Stupid shit we did when we were young” I can understand. I’ll take your word for it that she was mean. I’ve been pretty lucky in that regard. Not all my bosses have been winners but none of them were so bad that I remember them with venom years later.
In all fairness, she may have only been mean because she was hired to straighten up this store full of screw-ups.
It ain’t exactly a breeding ground for the Jack Welches of the business world.
Retail and fast food managers aren’t generally any better educated than the employees under their charge. They are typically given strict guidelines and directives established by the corporate office somewhere and their role is to robotically enforce them.
Actually, no. I’ve learned my lesson from a previous ill-thought-out confessional thread.
I was fired once. I had reported to my manager that our brokers were forging their customers’ signatures on retail property contracts. He did nothing. I contacted him again. He still did nothing. Then one day I was called into a room with my manager and HR. He said that I was being put on a performance improvement plan because I just wasn’t working hard enough. Oh, and why hadn’t I told him that some brokers were forging their contracts? I smiled and said I was, then said, “You’d better start looking for my replacement because I can guarantee you I’m looking for a new job.”
He immediately backpeddaled saying we shouldn’t be too hasty. He said he liked me and was sure we could work it out. I gave him some sort of nasty smirk and said, “Really? Because you know what? I’m sure I don’t like you right now. You need to find someone else. Fire me when you do so I can get unemployment if I can’t find a new job.” And I walked out.
They did wind up firing me eventually - they found someone after about two months. Then, when that person didn’t work out and they had to take action against some of the brokers for forging contracts, they closed that position entirely. There were no more brokers to support.
Yes, years ago. I was working as a dental technician & I just couldn’t make those blue wax carvings of mine look like teeth. Seem funny now but I was devastated at the time.
I’m not sure if I got fired from this one job. Let me explain.
It was a small family owned Chinese restaurant, and I delivered for them. When it was slow, I’d also work the deep fryer and do small prep-work for the owner/cook, Jimmy. Well, I was frying up a big load of egg rolls and transferring them from the basket into a metal bowl when one slipped out and dropped into the fryer. Oil jumped up and hit him right on the face, and damn near blinded him.
I felt awful, especially since it was around Christmas time. Anyway, the new year was coming up, since I was looking for a new job that could give me more hours anyway, I figured that I’d quit working come January. So I approached my boss, who didn’t speak too fantastic of English, and told her my plans.
But I realized that she seemed to be waiting to tell me something, too. Anyway, the night starts to end, and I come up to her, and say “Hey, Lisa, about this next year. When January rolls around…”
“January, you no work here.”
“Hey, yeah.” wow, I didn’t even have to say it. Wow, what a great moment of unspoken communication!
It only occurred to me several hours later that maybe she thought she was firing me, and I was too dumb to realize. I’m still not sure.
For a part-time job right after college, I lost a job because:
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When I called someone to ask about a shift she wanted covered, she never got hold of me because she kept leaving voice mail at a box I couldn’t check, and told her not to use. She went ahead and wrote my name in anyway, resulting in:
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The manager calling when I didn’t come in for this shift I didn’t know about and
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Getting a “this number had been disconnected” message because my cell service had been shut off for two days without my knowing it because
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The letter carriers who delivered mail to my complex interpreted my roommate’s change of address form to mean we were both moving out, resulting in my AT&T bill getting bounced back to them and under their policy resulting in the immediate termination of my service.
It still pisses me off to think about it.