I work in a bar/casino and one of the cooks got really drunk and quit because he lost $100 gambling. I saw it down on the sheet as, “<Joe Blow> said he wishes to quit, but was VERY intoxicated.” He came back and apologized the next day and got his job back.
Working in big-box retail, I’ve seen a number of coworkers and managers led out of the workplace in handcuffs. Usually shoplifting, occasionally other forms of theft. It’s always great when it’s someone who’s been making life at work a living hell. It also always makes the rounds at the store, because the manager’s office (the usual place where the arrest takes place) is at the back of the store, while the squad car to which the person is taken is at the front of the store. Not sure if it’s on purpose, but pretty much any employee who gets arrested gets paraded across the store, in front of all of the employees and customers.
One of the more spectacular arrests recently was a low-level associate who’d been suspected of setting fire to the store (in minor ways-- trash can on the patio, etc.) several times. We were all confused as to why he was still employed, because it was pretty damn obvious to many people that he had been responsible. Then, one day, he was hauled out in handcuffs. Good, finally got the petty arsonist! Until we watched the news that night, where it turned out that he was a wanted member of a white-power militia group that had been accused of several violent crimes. Understandably, he was promptly let go.
And then my favorite first-date story ever. Went on a date with a cute coworker; on this first date, we ended up at her place, watching TV, cuddling, etc. The news came on, and a pencil sketch of a man popped up. We both said “hey, that’s Richard!,” and cranked the volume. (Which, incidentally, says much about the skill of those pencil artists media outlets use… he was instantly recognizable, as if it was a photo.) Cranked the volume to find out he and his wife had been arrested on a great variety of heinous child molestation and child pornography charges, and had been nabbed in cooperation with his “employer.” Our store. Can’t imagine what it was like being in the store that day, but (obviously) the store fired him that day in addition to helping to get him arrested. Don’t know if they performed an exit interview.
I was 21 and working in a plastics company to pay for my education and my tiny living expenses. After about six stress-filled months, I had reached a point where I couldn’t deal with my abrasive, obnoxious line supervisor anymore. So, in a fit of indecision, I stayed home to decide whether to quit or not. I spent the morning drinking coffee & whiskey with my two roommates, who were more than happy to help in the decision-making process.
A little after noon, on the urging of my roommates, I called my supervisor.
“Hey Bill, it’s Jett. There’s a problem with my eyes…” I started.
“Yeah? Let’s hear it…” Bill growled.
“I just can’t see myself coming in today.” My drunken roommates howled with laughter. Unable to regain my composure, I hung up. I called again about 10 minutes later.
“Hey Bill, it’s Jett. Sorry about earlier; actually I AM sick…” I said.
“Uh huh,” says Bill.
“…of your shit!” I finished and slammed the phone down. Again with the howling drunken roomates. After more drinking, I took a little nap on the sofa. I woke up at about 3:00 and decided to call work one final time, sans laughing, drunken roommates.
“Hey, Bill? Jett. Sorry about this morning. I was just calling to let you know that I’ll be in on Friday to pick up my final check. As of today, I no longer work for Klein-Winston Molding.”
“No shit?!” says Bill before hanging up the phone.
When I was a fast food manager I had two employees get in a fight right on the front line, right as the lunch rush was ramping up and several people were lining up ready to place their orders. One of the employees splashed a drink in the other one’s face and then everything escalated from there, mostly a pushing and shoving match. I don’t even remember what the issue was. Needless to say they were both immediately fired. It wasn’t easy to recover from that embarrassing episode that day.
I worked for a direct-mail advertising firm for a time as a graphic designer. The area I worked in was new, so they were working on hiring new staff members to fill all the necessary positions, and I was one of the first hired. About a week later, the boss called me and the handful of us that were in that division in to meet our new coworker, a guy who was going to be our lead salesman. They rambled on an impressive list of accomplishments, and announced that new dude would be heading to a big trade show the next week, so we should be ready for the stream of work that would be pouring in.
The next week came, the day of the show arrived…and suddenly, there was panic in the office. Our boss was running around looking like someone had a contract on his life, and then rushed in and told us he was on the next flight to the show. We had no idea what was going on, but as he ran out the door, the admin assistant came in and told us that apparently, new dude never showed at the show, and that our booth was there, empty, with no one to run it…hence the boss heading out.
Two days later, the boss returned, and informed us all that the new guy was missing, and no one knew where he was. Then, a day after that, the boss walked in, CLEARLY pissed, and called a meeting…in which he told us what had happened. Apparently, the new dude arrived in the city where the trade show was taking place, and had checked into the hotel and then IMMEDIATELY went to a strip club…where he blew through $5,000 in one night of partying! He apparently got so smashed that he passed out somewhere, and was relieved of his wallet and other valuables, and eventually was picked up in the street by the police, who held him for some reason or another…but he never bothered to call us and tell us. Dumber still is that the $5,000 he spent was on a company account!
Talk about a hell of a way to make a first impression on your first “working” day!
I’ve got two stories. Neither are as dramatic as the ones listed, but still:
-
At my previous job, there was a woman who was the most terrible coworker ever. She admitted to us that she decided every morning who she was going to pick a fight with. She argued with everything. I had to train her, and when I said something like, “Do you feel like trying to call X company and place an order?” She said, “No.” It was a rhetorical question! She also admitted to us that she was skipping her birth control pills to get pregnant. Whatever, but…her boyfriend worked in the warehouse. Any one of us could have gone back there and told him! She was utterly miserable at every opportunity and a total bitch. The company was looking for reasons to fire her.
Then, she really did get pregnant. So the company had to be really careful about firing her. We decided we were just going to have to suck it up and deal with her…when she got caught, on camera, stealing a $3.00 bottle of floor cleaner. Bang! The company nailed her and she was fired.
Then, she tried to bring a wrongful termination suit against us, claiming that she had been fired for her pregnancy. Ha! The suit never went anywhere. -
This one just happened this year. We hired someone who interviewed wonderfully, and truthfully, she was a wonderful woman - cheerful, happy, always in a good mood. Perfect for our job. However, what we didn’t know, and what you can’t tell in an interview, was the woman was dumb as a brick. I myself taught her basic things like expense reports and running reports - seven or eight times. And it wasn’t like I was reminding her of little things or helping her out. Every week we did expense reports, and every week I had to start from scratch. She literally had no recollection of what we had done last week. She never even figured out how to find her expense reports on the computer.
It was the same with her interactions with the other coworkers. They’d tell her, in an e-mail, “Don’t contact so-and-so”. She’d call them the next day. They’d say, “Do it this way.” Next day, she’d have completely forgotten how to do it.
Eventually we just had to fire her, she was so bad. We’re in a very high-pressure high-tension situation and though we understand it’s tough, we simply can’t slow down that much.
This woman, a 60 YO + woman, started sobbing in the office. Long, loud, racking sobs. Instead of packing her things and getting out, she went into her office and shut the door and called someone, and sobbed long and loud on the phone. It echoed around the office. The boss eventually had to encourage her to get out. And yet it was a full hour of continuous sobbing before she eventually got out. Humiliating for everyone involved.
I think we have a winner here!!
Many years ago, I was a deputy sheriff. I was going to the academy during the day and working night shift when I was canned. I was carpooling to the academy with three other officers and on the way back at 5:30 p.m., I’m dozing in the car when the news comes on the radio that the sheriff’s department had let four officers go. And they named us: two lieutenants, another patrolman and me.
Needless to say, as soon as I got into town, I was on the phone with the chief deputy and I was pissed. I headed into the office and demanded to know WTF was going on. I was told that there had been a mixup in communications and the names were not supposed to have been released until after everyone got the word. My reason for being fired: insubordination and refusal to follow a direct order. The order: I had arrested the same Catholic priest three separate times in seven weeks for DWI. The Church put the heat on the big sheriff and I was ordered to reduce the charges to public intoxication, which I refused to do. I had fun doing a follow-up interview with the radio station the next day.
Awhile back, I worked for a company which had a call center. Although I didn’t work in the call center, my office was right off of the main room, next to the Supervisor (of the call center employees). Over the year plus that I was there, I befriended a (male) call center employee, whom I’ll call A.–not a “friend with benefits”, but just someone that I occassionally went to lunch, and would sometimes hang out after work.
At the same time, the Call Center Supervisor (whom I’ll call J) was a massive control freak of her employees. J was VERY jealous of the relationship I had with A, and would make snide comments about how he was my “stud boy” and would imply that we weren’t eating lunch during lunch breaks (“We know what you were doing in the parking lot during lunch” she would say). She would always come up with inappropriate remarks to her employees–for example, she told one older lady who was dressed very nicely that she looked like a “two bit hooker” in her outfit (she didn’t).
Being gay, J would hit on me, even though I made it clear on several occassions that I was not only not gay, but not interested in her. She even hit on me and made sexual comments to me in front of other co-workers (call center employees as well as my peers at work). I NEVER encouraged her, but would tell her to stop with the comments, and that they made me uncomfortable. I never reported her because even though I hated every single aspect of the job, I really needed it and felt that the company would find a way to fire me if I caused too much problems. (As a side note, the company was always gushing how much they needed J, and how she had turned around the productivity of the call center, and how wonderful J was, etc. J used that to convey to everyone how indespensible she was to the company.)
Finally, I find another job and give my two weeks notice, but don’t tell J or anyone else, except my immediate boss and my friend, A. It was my last week, and I was packing up my office. J sees me, and asks me what I’m doing, so I tell her that I’ve given my notice, etc. She flips out–acting hurt that I “would leave her” and how things won’t be the same without me here, and how I was all she had to look forward to everyday at work. (Did I mention that she was in a relationship? She and her wife had two kids together and had been together for some time.) I diffuse the situation as best as I can without committing to anything (and really wanting her to get the hell out of my office), and think that’s that.
Later that afternoon, A. comes to my office, upset. Apparently his supervisor, J, had written him up on entirely fabricated charges and put him on probation. (Showing up late for work–even though there were records of him logging into his computer, not doing his work–even though there were call logs, etc.) I confronted her about it (which I probably shouldn’t have done, but I was pissed that this followed so closely on the heels of our conversations), and she replied that she “had to do something to keep you here”.
I flipped out. Now, I get irritated, but I rarely get angry, and even less get furious. I was beyond furious–I was LIVID. Rather than strangle her, I stormed back to my office and slammed the door shut. The walls rattled. The one picture I had left on my wall, fell to the floor. The entire call center was so silent, one could hear a pin drop. While I sat at my desk, attempting to compose myself, there was a knock on my door. It was my supervisor from another part of the building.
I opened the door, and she asked me what had happened, and what was wrong. Luckily, I had printed earlier in the day the letter that I’d planned on sending to HR once I’d left. It was a detailed listing of every single incident, every single comment, with dates and witnessess of inappropriate comments and actions J had done to me, plus anything which I had witnessed her doing to others.
I handed it to my supervisor, telling her, “This is partially what is wrong.” I sat silently (trying to calm down) while she read it. The color poured out of her face. When she was finished, I followed up with what I (and A) believed to be the retaliation J had taken against A.
Apparently the company felt the same way.
I left that day (immediately after my conversation with my supervisor, who nicely walked with me to my car–no security escourting me out or anything). A called the next day and spoke to my supervisor, telling her that under the hostile working environment with J, he was unable to work there any longer. (He filed for unemployment, and the company didn’t even fight it.) I never went back to finish my time.
I later heard that J had gotten demoted until they investigated, then got fired.
I’m struggling with how to word this without being too specific, and thus identifying the individual, since the circumstances and location are unique.
A co-worker was fired for riding up and down in the service elevator.
Wearing only his socks, gunbelt, and handgun.
At a high-priority US military facility.
Nothing as dramatic as some of the stories, but the “best” one I ever saw was at what DH and I still refer to as The Bad Place. I lasted for 9 months and set some sort of record, but I was also throwing up every morning and sobbing all the way home by that time.
There were 3 of us in “support” in the front office. Kind of a combination reception/secretarial work, mostly for the two company owners, but some for the salespeople. One of the owners was great. The other was the anti-christ. He had no respect for anyone who wasn’t directly bringing in money, so he treated us like dirt. And he was one of those who was never happy about anything. Ask follow-up questions about a task? You’re an idiot who can’t think for yourself. Finish the task and find out he doesn’t like the results? Should have asked him more questions. No way to win with this guy.
The three of us staggered our lunches so there was alway at least one of us in the office. One gal, who started a month or so before I did, had something (to this day I don’t know what) happen while I was at lunch. I got back, she went to lunch, and then she called to say she had a message on her desk she’d forgotten to leave for the anti-christ, and would I mind leaving it on his desk? Sure.
She never came back from lunch, and the “message” was from her saying that she’d had enough and wasn’t coming back.
Two other people quit within the next month or so with doctors’ notes about anxiety and stress affecting their health.
This is probably better suited to a new thread, but I’ll share my thoughts here anyway.
Her age makes me wonder if she wasn’t so much “dumb” per se, but had rather forgotten how to learn. She’s in the right age group (right about my mom’s age, in fact) to be part of the last generation (in the US, anyway - I don’t recall if you’re in the US or not) that was still fairly likely to have gotten a job out of high school or college and then kept that same job. And perhaps the requirements of that job didn’t change a whole lot over the years. For example, my dad worked essentially the same job (for the state) for 36 years, though he was promoted twice during that time and retired at a rank one level below the head of the department for the whole state. My mom, meanwhile, was a career homemaker, again part of the last American generation for which that was not out of the ordinary.
I think some people just settle into a comfort zone where, because they’re not really required to constantly learn new things, they don’t. And eventually they forget how to learn new things. Then one day they find themselves in a situation where they need to learn something new, and they just can’t. Say, a woman who was a career homemaker loses her husband, and decides to go get a job to keep herself busy; or a man who worked the same job for decades loses that job when the business closes up shop for some reason, and has to get a new job in a different field. It doesn’t say anything about their personality - they can be wonderful, cheerful people who everybody loves to be around, and hard workers. They just have difficulty picking up new things because they’ve gone too long without exercising their “learning muscles”.
(Though I used them as examples, I’m not describing my own parents here. My dad never stopped learning, because over the span of his career (1968 - 2004) a lot of new technology was invented and introduced that he had to learn. And though my mom was a career homemaker, she was always investigating things that caught her interest and learning everything she could about them. That, and she read a lot. After my parents divorced she married a man who was a computer enthusiast. She had never used a computer in her life, but in her 50s she started using computers and picked it up very quickly and easily.)
checks trousers still female
During the two years I was living back with my parents to help care for Dad, I got several short-term jobs. One of them was through an agency. I had specified that I could NOT work rotating shifts or nights; this was both because my body doesn’t grasp the concept of “sleeping by day” and because my mother wouldn’t have let me do it even if I’d been able to (she spent all day beside Dad, so I was left with any errands and all the housework).
The job was “Susana’s aide,” Susana being the quality manager for a small rubber company. Her greeting to me was a snorted “let’s see how long this one lasts:” yep, she made a point of driving people nuts.
The woman who’d held the job of Susana’s aide the shortest time had taken her lab coat off and dropped it over Susana’s head saying “I’ve got better things to do with my life” after exactly 3 and a half hours on it.
Me, I held for 11 and a half weeks. 8 years later I still held the endurance record.
That 12th week I was set to work the first of many night shifts. I explained that I couldn’t work nights; I pointed out that my contract was for “office hours” and if I was going to work shifts I needed a new contract. I was told to suck it up.
On Tuesday I got home at 7. Mom got me out of bed at 8 to go buy Dad’s breakfast and wouldn’t believe me when I told her the supermarket opened at 9.
On Wednesday I got maybe two hours sleep.
Wednesday night, at 3am, I was so dizzy I almost stuck my ungloved hand inside a machine that works at 300C (no protection). I shut it down, sat down, had a good cry, went to get the foreman and told him I was sorry but I couldn’t stay: I like my hands a lot more than I liked the job. The factory was 22km from my parents’, I took an hour to drive it, never went over second gear.
Next morning I walked in at 11am with two trays of minicakes and three of minisandwiches; Susana arrived while I was setting them on a table. She told me that I was fired, I answered “no shit.” She asked why I wasn’t crying, I asked what kind of moron did she take me for and went back to unwrapping the food (which got promptly wolfed down by everybody except her and the factory manager, even the owner had some).
At a previous company, apparently right before I was hired, some manager gave his resignation. Not normally a big deal, but apparently it caused a bit of an uproar when he sent his farewell email to the entire company and told everyone he was “leaving the company to become a pirate”.
I had a customer once who couldn’t present me with any evidence they were doing preventive maintenance (I’m a quality auditor.) This surprised me because they had everything else pretty squared away.
“Well, where do you think the records went?” I asked.
“Oh,” they said, “Tran has them, probably.”
“Who’s that?”
“Well, he used to be our miantenance supervisor.”
“What happened?”
“We’ll show you,” and the guy leads me back to his desk and pulls out a newspaper clipping.
Well, it turns out that one day Tran just didn’t show up for work. Nor did he show up the next day or the next or the next. They called his house, wondering where the hell he was, with no response. They got their answer when Tran shows up in the newspaper grinning, giving the camera a thumbs up, holding his Lotto 6/49 check for some five million dollars.
I wouldn’t bother calling, either.
At 16, I had a summer job at a local Toys R Us. Other than a paper route and a few little things here or there, this was my first real working experience.
One day, one of the managers (I don’t remember his name, I’ll call him “Bill”) called me in and asked me where the money was from my register. I was $28 or so short a day or so ago. I honestly didn’t take it and he agreed that I may have just given wrong change somehow. He made me sign a sheet saying that I didn’t take it, I know stealing is wrong, if my register comes up short again, my job is in jeapordy. yadda yadda yadda.
I played football at high school and that was starting up a few weeks or so before school actually began so I gave the store manager “Hans” notice that I was leaving. he essentially begged me to work another week so after practice on Monday, my sister drove me to the store.
I got there and clocked in and Bill asked me to go to the back room with him. I went back there and there was another older man in a suit waiting. they sat me down and started asking questions like how am I doing, am I dating (my answer: “Well, I’m trying to”), ha ha ha, I’m smart, we’re all friends here.
Then In changed. The other guy was a store investigator, apparently, and my register came up short again, so they started accusing me of stealing from it. I kep insisting that I was innocent and at one point the investigator said “Why’d you take it? Did you have a hot date that night?”
They kept pressing and they even told me that it could be handled one of two ways: either with just them or they’ll call the police, and believe me, the police *will * handle it. Of course, I was innocent and I kept saying that.
Eventually, Bill says the he’s calling the police, he stepped out of the area and then returned a few minutes later and said that they were all tied up at the moment (ha ha, shyeah right). Eventually, the whole scene kind of wound down and Bill said that he’s letting me go. If anyone asks, it’s like I quit but for the pruposes of the store, I was fired.
So I turned in my orange vest (I was like Branded!) and went to the washroom to wash my face. I punched out and left, stopped and talked to a few other employees along the way. I wasn’t escorted out, but I was really wrecked from the experience.
I let my mom go yell at Bill and she let him have it when she caught up to him a couple days later. The only thing he could say was “Well, I knew he didn’t do it.” She told him he was not going to be anything more than a Toys R Us manager if he treats his people like this.
Looking back, it was a very odd and funny experience. And it was odd and funny about 10 minutes after everything ended but if I had a little more maturity under my belt I would have been able to have handled it better. But I was just a kid getting yelled at by adults and it was pretty rough.
I did get paid for being there that day though, so yay for that at least.
Mister Rik, actually what you say is quite possible. There have been studies done that people who are constantly learning things, even into old age, tend to have less memory problems and continue to be able to learn new things. Which is one of the reasons I get mad when people say “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” or whatever.
However I do believe it’s at least partially their own fault - i.e., they put up this mental block and refuse to even try. I have a great font of patience, cultivated carefully over the years, but the seventh time you tell someone how to run the same report, after you’ve seen them write it down and you’ve even written it down for them (but they can’t find their notes or refuse to look at them) one gets frustrated.
And it was such a busy time we didn’t have time to coddle her. Hell I work for a charity. We don’t have time to coddle any of the employees. we kick them into the deep end and tell them to swim.
Just last year, we had an employee send a picture of himself naked except for a tie, to several female employees. The caption was. “getting a divorce, who wants me now?”
No one did apparently as he was escorted from the building about 15 minutes later.
Not spectacular, but weird. A coworker went to his supervisor late Friday afternoon and gave notice. As he was a good employee it was a surprise and an attempt to counteroffer was made.
“When’s your last day?”
“Today”
“Um… Where will you be going?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“Is there something we can do to change your mind?”
“No. I just can’t be here anymore”
And he was gone. The supervisor talked to some people that knew him socially, and they attempted to contact him at home. No answer (this was in the pre-cell phone era). On Saturday they went to visit him, and found his landlady inspecting his empty apartment. She told them he had terminated his lease the day before. His car was still parked on the street, but everything else was gone.
A week later we heard from his sister in northern California. He had showed up at her door with his bicycle. He’d ridden all the way from the Los Angeles area, and was convinced that people were out to get him, so he couldn’t drive (license plates are traceable) and he didn’t know where else to go. His sister eventually convinced him to see a doctor as he was unusually agitated and paranoid. It turned out that while on a business trip to Indonesia he had picked up some parasite which was screwing with his brain chemistry and made him intensely paranoid.
A few months later, after he was all better, he was rehired.
For some reason that post and username go very well together…