How hard is it to get fired in your line of work?

In My Humble Opinion
41

Remember with drug and/or alcohol issues, you can’t really fire them straight off. Because they are considered “illnesses” or “disabilities” you have to give the person a chance to set themselves straight.

Of course you can force them to change jobs, for instance a driver in a hotel, who has drug issues, may be forced to change jobs till he can complete a treatment program and verify he is clean and no danger.

I used to work overnight in a few hotels, and it’s very difficult to get fired, because it’s hard to replace them. I had on clerk he was very marginal. H/R wanted me to fire him and I refused. I said, “No, not till you can get me a replacement.” I told them, as employees go, he was marginal and I didn’t like him but I was not going to work 7 days a week for months on end till you find someone.

I ran a call center and the rules there were very strict so it was easy to get fired, by simply not meeting standards. For instance, all operators had to maintain an average call time of 2 minutes. I remember one lady, Frieda, I felt so bad firing her 'cause in every single way she was a great employee.

She came in every single time we called her, was polite, we’d get letters about how helpful she was, but she just couldn’t keep her call times down. I even went to the owner of the company and asked for an exception, but he said, “No.”

I was fair about it. I told her that her call times were way too high. I told her she’d be given 60 days to get them below 2 minutes, and I even assigned my best agent to help her.

In the end I had to let her go. I felt really bad too. It wasn’t tragic as the call center was a second part time job for her, but still…

42

Extremely easy.

I work for a small-ish trading firm. I’ve known guys that have been here for years, made a bad trade, and been fired the next day.

43

Unionized bus driver. Its very hard to get fired at my job, with a few exceptions.

-Get in an accident with the bus that was your fault? Depending on the severity, they just re-train you. But there have been drivers who had 5 accidents in a year and they still weren’t fired.

-Dont show up for work? You’d have to miss a lot of days unexcused. And there are plenty of ways to take time off (FMLA) that don’t affect your attendance. As our manager said, “We don’t fire sick people. We fire stupid people”

-Fail a drug test? they put you in a treatment program. Only if you fail a drug test during that treatment program will they fire you.

However, there are two things that will get you fired ASAP:

-Getting a DUI, because it suspends your commercial license for 1+ year and we drive for a living- they don’t keep dead weight around for longer than a year.

-Talking on a phone/using an ipod/etc while driving. They have gotten extremely strict about this, Last month we had 3 people get fired over it.

44

I don’t know, let me go see.

ETA: Awwww, shit. Apparently pretty easy. :frowning:

45

I sell high end software. It is ridiculously easy to get fired in this field. Sales figures are published every month and everyone in the company has access to the data. Since being in this career, I’ve never gone a year where no salespeople have been fired.

You get paid absurdly well as long as you keep performing, but fall to the bottom of the list and life is extremely uncomfortable. Any decent salesperson can see this coming nine months ahead, and usually starts looking for a new job. Average tenure in this field is around two years.

46

I work in defense in business development. I prefer to work for small companies, which is both good and bad. The good is that the million dollar contract win that was “ONLY” a million dollars at a large company makes you a hero at the small one. That said, the owners of said companies are often hot headed former military and could fire you on a whim, especially if you have too many proposal losses in a row. Never mind that you can’t control the past history of the company or the salaries of their employees, which could ultimately lead to losing a bid because of poor past performance or high prices. That’s just how it goes. Turnover is very high in the industry at all levels. If a company loses a contract, the employees generally all jump ship to go to the new company to follow the work. Only the senior engineers or friends of the owners seem to stick around.

47

I work in banking. People who do the same job as I do have an about-average chance of getting fired. Ethical violations and embezzlement are pretty much an automatic fire; everything else depends. If you’re incompetent, you’re out, but it might take a while to discover how incompetent you are.

However, in the particular bank I work in, it’s hard to get fired simply because upper management is focused on what they call “community banking,” and wants to keep everyone as long as possible (short of outright criminal behaviour).

It’s not unusual for them to pay for their people to get training or even for their university coursework if it’s banking-related, so of course they work double-time to keep those people on payroll.

As long as I keep doing good work, I’m pretty safe. Even if they closed my particular location I might be relocated to another (provided I’m willing to commute).

48

Chemical industry here.

Very, very easy to get fired. Even easier lately since there is certainly no lack of people looking for employment.

We have fairly rigorous drug and alcohol “random” testing.

Show up positive for just about anything (any “tested” drug or a BAC over 0.04 while on the job) and you’re gone, no debate, no appeal. Interestingly they don’t test for hallucinogens. To a point I can understand this - you don’t want a worker that is “chemically compromised” to cause a major spill or accident that could potentially harm the community. Still - even the faintest traces of marijuana? Really? That’s a danger?

Cause any accident or spill where they can show you didn’t follow the written procedure - you’re gone.

Add on top of this the economic contraction -

Piss off the boss or plant manager - hell, they need to get rid of people anyways - you’re gone.

It’s a large Fortune 500 company, so:

Do anything that could be construed as sexual harassment - gone.

Make any sort of racially insensitive comment - gone.

From the company’s standpoint, the have like 100 plants throughout the world. Very few people are worth the risk of a lawsuit should someone decide to try to sue. Easier to fire on even the hint of discrimination or bias.

Yep, it’s ridiculous. I’d be far angrier and more rebellious if I hadn’t seen half my colleagues laid off in the last year and a half. As it is, I just keep my head down and hope I’m not next.

49

I own the business. Ain’t nobody gonna fire me!

50

Except maybe the inexorable laws of economics. :smiley:

51

Same here. I’m currently at a company more like the former, but right now, we’re having one of those onces in a while. Apparently, the only people who are being let go are the ones who probably should have been fired before, anyway, so I don’t need to worry too much.

That said, I’m glad to have this thread title reminding me periodically that this is a question I don’t really want to know the answer to, and I should get off the Dope and get back to work.