I got fired when I didn’t show up for work a day after my husbands funeral.Seems I signed a contract when I was hired 2 yrs.before stating that only 3 days were allowed after an immediate family member has died…sucks don’t it
While it wasn’t the official reason, I always found it kind of funny. He got fired for quitting. Essentially, he came in, gave his 2-weeks’ notice, and got fired.
Well, maybe I find it funny, anyway.
I think it would be getting caught having sex with an employee, but that’s just another one I thought up.
-foxy
Easy one, and I know of at least one occasion when a friend of mine was part of the HR staff that had to sack the guy: masturbating to pornography on an office PC during work hours.
One that I was peripherally involved in was even more disturbing: sacked when an unrelated investigation uncovered a large quantity of child pornography on the person’s work PC.
At a place I once worked, a guy got fired for drilling a peephole into the women’s bathroom. He got caught when someone became suspicious about the pile of empty Cheeto bags around the box he was sitting on while peeping. The perv was muching Cheetos while watching women pee! :eek: :eek: :eek:
I always wondered if he touched himself with his orange-stained hands.
One of the technical guys at another plant in our company was working alone in the lab late one night(since he didn’t bother showing up 'til noon). When one of his assistants got there early the next morning she noticed an awful smell. It turns out he had crapped in the wastebasket and left the evidence. She took the entire wastebasket, and marched it into the office to our company president. Once he stopped laughing the tech guy didn’t have a job.
I’m not saying that this is what happened in your friend’s case, that’s not all that unusual in some fields. Security-sensitive businesses (in my experience, banks) will often accept the employee’s two-weeks notice and immediately escort him off the premises. It’s just good risk management in any situation where someone might decide to throw a wrench into the works on their way out the door. When I left the bank I used to work for, my boss as much as told me when I gave her my notice that if she didn’t depend on me as much as she did, “standard procedure” would have been for me to be cleaning out my desk right then.
On a Sunday night (I never worked on Sundays), about 20 Km away from where I work, I was approached by a guy who asked me if I wanted to work for his escort service.
I was intrigued. I started hanging out with a girl who was an escort before I decided whether I wanted to choose that as a career.
This got around at work. Nine days later, I showed up for my 1 PM shift, was accused by my supervisor of turning tricks at work, was banned from the mall for; (to quote the mall security) “The seriousness of this”. The seriousness of WHAT!?! I never DID anything in or around the mall, other than be accused by my pop-eyed, hyperactive and imaginative supervisor!
Then I was arrested by the police. They interrogated me and let me go when they realized that my supervisor was a nutcase who had no grounds for her accusations. Now if only they would talk to Mall security…
I probably can’t top some of the ones already posted, but I have a pretty good story too.
When I was in college, we had a really incompetant - but tenured - professor who taught a few classes I had. He usually showed up for class late, and sometimes not at all (with no explanation or advance notice when that happened). One class was taught from a textbook he’d self-published because no reputable publisher would touch it. And he was all around not a very good teacher. But he had tenure, so he couldn’t be fired for any of these.
One of his classes he had waited so long to give out course evaluations that everyone figured he never would. So on one of the days when he didn’t show up, a girl in the class went to the department head’s office, explained what was going on, and came back with the course evaluation forms herself. They were filled out in a suitably vitriolic manner and duly returned. The professor never did actually hand the students any course evaluation forms.
He stayed there for another semester, but disappeared after that. I found out the department head had made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: “If you resign now, you won’t have to explain why you turned in a second set of course evaluation forms that gave you top marks when all the students agree you never handed out any such forms.”
One of the guys who laid my driveway was sacked for taking a shit… and I have to admit that some of the blame lies with me!
The first I knew about this was when my neighbour came to my door, to inform me that one of the labourers working on the job had taken a dump next to her garden fence, and left a big pile of poo sitting there; she saw him commit the deed while looking through her window, and naturally wasn’t too pleased. I was rather embarassed about the whole thing, apologised to her and reported the situation to my contractor.
The contractor told me to leave it with him… I thought he was going to hand the other guy a bucket and make him clear up his mess. Instead, he just sacked him that evening after the job was finished, citing his reason as “protecting the good name of his business”.
Turns out that the labourer had been suffering from a bad gut, and had already tried ringing my doorbell in an attempt to use my toilet. Unfortunately for him, I was listening to my headphones at the time and didn’t hear a thing, hence why he had to resort to shitting al fresco instead. Oops…
My dad, many years ago, got fired for being too good for the job. The boss said he’d thank her for getting him away from a deadend job. He did 
[sup]but later, not right then.[/sup]
Nah, he was really just fired for being a bad worker, but he was just good enough that they couldn’t actually fire him for anything, so when he gave his notice they just told him (politely) to bugger off.
Getting the bosses daughter pregnant
Bryan Ekers:
I should think the worst thing to write on your next job’s application form under “Reasons for leaving your last job” would be “shooting spree.”
Yep, I wouldn’t suggest that! 
Having sex in the backseat of the company car with the boss’ doberman.
I think that’d be pretty bad.
Along those same lines, I was once fired from a job because I wore earrings, which the dress code specifically banned for men. I thought the policy was sexist and discriminatory.
I know someone who was working on a project for his boss. His boss, with the same ability as the Pointy-Haired Boss in Dilbert, totally fried my friend’s work PC, erasing the whole thing. My friend muttered under is breath, in exasperation, I’m gonna kill him." Someone overheard, and told his HR dept that he has threatened to kill hs boss. According to him, he tried to explain that it was an exaggeration. Much like people who say it about their kids don’t have Social Services come in, and how people that say something like that about a pet wouldn’t have the ASPCA show up and take the animal away. They didn’t care.
I lost a job about ten years ago because I skipped a shift to take skydiving lessons. It was a pretty crappy job, so it didn’t bother me at the time, but still, it was pretty irresponsible and stupid. The skydive was great, though.
I once lost a job for no reason whatsoever. I worked there for fifteen months, and in that time, I was never late, I never called in sick, I took only one vacation day in half-days increments for two important doctor’s appointments which were both planned at least six weeks in advance.
I was fulfilling all of my job responsibilities, I sought additional work, I stayed late and worked through lunches if I felt it necessary. I never received a single complaint about the quality of my work, my workstyle or any aspect of my performance. I was simply called into the conference room one Friday morning and told that my services were no longer required. The managing partner of the company refused to give me any reason for my termination. To add insult to the injury, he had some geek from accounting stand over me while I gathered up my personal belongings to make sure that I didn’t steal any paperclips.
It’s been fifteen years, that was my first job outside academia, and it still sticks in my throat.