When we put in the effort to meet our employer’s professional expectations, it can be very frustrating and demotivating to see other coworkers completely ignore those standards. For many, the internet is the best place to vent and share their stories of employees who probably should have been fired for their misconduct but weren’t.

As funny or shocking as many of these stories might be, some of them may reveal serious underlying problems at their workplaces. Here are a few reasons why bad employees might be held on to by a business:

• No replacements available;
• Blackmail;
• Interpersonal relationships.

There are others as well, but even if the reason is understandable, preferential and unfair treatment can still have a negative impact on other employees at the company.

#1

Back when I was doing my student teaching, a teacher punched a student in the face and did not get fired.

In his defense, the kid was 17 and thought it would be funny to rip the wig off of a female teacher who was going through chemo. The teacher who did the punching was right there and it was pretty much an immediate reaction. Not a single person in that school blamed that teacher for what he did.

Image credits: partofbreakfast

#2

It was actually me, i still have no idea what i was thinking.

The owners of the company all showed up for a company meeting, and gave this 30minute long speech about how much they value our work and they wanted to reward us. They started handing out checks, i open it up and see $2,000. Now, I dont make a ton of money and I was having health issues and been to the ER a few times in the last few months. So this money would literally save me.

Everyones is all excited and very surprised our management who were known to be penny pinches that didnt care at all about employees would do this.

Then I see it.

The checks were all dated for for 2 years from now. They said if we stayed with the company with no write ups and never miss a day of work we could cash those checks in 2 years.

I just lost it... I walked up the front of the presentation, held my check up, ripped it into shreds, and said "This is some serious b******t." and threw the shreds at the owners.

Surprisingly I wasnt fired. Probably because I am the highest producing employee in the company. or maybe they realized toying with people like that really wasnt a good idea. Who knows.

Image credits: Jesta23

#3

Accidentally emailed the salaries of about 1,000 employees to those employees, so everyone got to see how much more money the new guy who was worse than them made.

Cost a lot of money to level all those salaries.

Image credits: HighOnGoofballs

#4

I worked at a pet store for a long time. We had a Cyanobacteria outbreak and were bleaching individual tanks (once separated from main sump) and then dechlorinating the tanks and testing them before putting them back in with the main sump system.


We had been undergoing the process for about a week at that point, but apparently Ole Red hadn't been paying attention at all during that time period.


She reattached a tank half-full of bleach to the main tank system. As I walked into the store (it was my day off; I was just there for lizard food), I just see the majority of the fish moving around listlessly. Then they started death-spiralling. I point this out to my coworkers and they start freaking out. One of them starts dumping bottles of dechlorinator into the system.


Meanwhile, Ole Red fishes out her favorite fish, blood parrot cichlids, and starts blowing into their gills, trying to do some s****y approximation of CPR. She ends up throwing them into the separate sick tank in hopes of saving them.


Anyway, she killed 99% of the fish and I had to help shovel out their corpses while crying the entire time.


She didn't get fired and never took responsibility for the event.


tldr: Fishpocalypse 2012 caused by an idiot with a jug of bleach.

Image credits: nerdhappyjq

#5

A guy I work with has been caught with a prostitute in his work truck on company time.

Twice.

One of them was underage.

I don't know how he still has a job.

Image credits: Adddicus

#6

Worked at a small radio station. Guy who was on air before me would record the local news for me to play at 6pm. It was recorded so if he messed up he would just start over and edit that part out. Well one day he forgets that he messed up so he doesn't edit it. I play the news on-air at 6 and in the middle I hear "GOD DAMNIT NOW I HAVE TO DO THIS F*****G THING AGAIN...(then in his pleasant radio voice) Hi I'm Jim Thomas with your 6 o'clock news update". Not sure why he didn't get fired.

Image credits: paulvs88

#7

I worked at a pizza place 4 or 5 days a week after school, and everyone else that worked there was a boy; not a single female but me. The boys that I worked with acted as you would expect, picking on me and always making me the butt of their jokes. I wasn't too bothered, i can handle a joke pretty well. One boy, named Tyler, took it really far and threatened to rape me several times, and would grab my chest after i repeatedly told him not to. I told the manager about it, and instead of the reaction i had hoped for, my manager laughed in my face. I quit the next day.

Image credits: haether

#8

Had a tantrum, screamed at me (for catching her falsifying reports to the government), smashed her keyboard on her desk (snapped it in two), was openly sexist, racist...

I got fired

Image credits: PM_ME_BEEF_CURTAINS

#9

At one hotel I worked at one girl got caught dropping empty drop envelopes into the safe and taking the cash. I'm talking about hundreds of dollars per shift for multiple shifts.

She was hot though. I think the owner liked staring at her.

By the time i quit, she was still there.

Image credits: michikade

#10

New guy in office. We introduce ourselves. He then goes to the boss (which is a woman). Slaps her a*s from behind and when she turns around he kisses her on the lips grabbing said a*s.

Turns out they are married

EDIT: spelling
EDIT: they are married **to each other** since people asked ahah

Image credits: wesrdctfvygbhunjimko

#11

Facilities maintenance company I worked for got taken over by a new company. The new company was s**t to work for. One of the guys was getting really stressed out and since his wife made big bucks she told him to quit. Instead of quitting he decided to just come and go as he pleased, stole whatever he wanted, used the shop area and company supplies to work on personal projects for his house. This went on for over a year. They promoted him out of his position into management.

Image credits: A_H0RRIBLE_PERSON

#12

I was at a strip club in vegas with an ad exec who charged THIRTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS on his corporate card over the course of a very long night. Not a damn thing happened to him at work.

Image credits: Begbie3

#13

not sure which one is better. I work on exotic cars for clarification....

old dealership I worked for, car sales manager got caught taking a Lamborghini (without company permission) to pick up a date for a baseball game and ended up rear ending someone (he still works there)....

subsequent dealership I worked for, guy went to move an exotic race car... thought the big red button on the dash was to start the car. that was the mobile fire extinguisher button, filled the entire car up with fire extinguisher fluid (he quit 6 months after this).

Image credits: twinturbochris

#14

Phone call from employee with company car starts with: "So I just ran over this dude..."

Turns out dude had dementia or something, not the first time he's dashed out into traffic. Family did nothing. No insurance claim, no lawsuit, no nothing. His daughter came outside, yelled at the guy (her dad), and called an ambulance. Cops were involved. No idea how we ended up with no liability.

Image credits: gwana

#15

Co-worker would read erotic Harry Potter fan fiction on her workstation for at least 6 hours a day at 40+pt font size.

Image credits: Qysses

#16

She came in still drunk from the night before. Her partner calls the director, who shows up and tells her to get a shower and sleep it off. I work for a 911 ems service.

Image credits: Mephestos_halatosis

#17

I used to work at a fast food chain restaurant as a cook. One Sunday it was extra busy around lunch time and one of the cashiers kept messing up orders. My assistant general manager, who at the time was cooking with me, got so frustrated with the cashier that he took all the food that was on the grills and fryers and threw it against a wall.

Image credits: Christopher_Ocean

#18

He was GM, owner was his college roomie, and he was only at work a maximum of 40 hrs out of 80 in the two-week pay period. He would leave in the mornings and go do his other job, leaving me (production manager) to run the place, and then come back towards the end of the day. He still billed the owner 80 hours per two-week pay period. He did this for at least 6 months.

I told the owner when I left the company.

They had a long chat.

He still works there.

His name is Chad.

Image credits: Srslywhyumadbro

#19

Coming in to work very high very often. They were very obviously high on horse tranqs recently

Image credits: Veg_n

#20

When I was a barista we would get weekly Mark outs where we could take home a bag of coffee or tea for free. Just one though.

My coworker was this fat, evil, compulsive lying b***h that everyone hated. One day she got caught trying to steal one of our other coworker's weekly mark out at one of our stores in another town. Fat b***h was white; awesome coworker she was trying to steal from was Asian so when her name popped up in the system after fat b***h gave them "her" employee numbers they knew she wasn't who she said she was.

She threw a huge hissy fit and one of the workers there took video of it. We only found out about it when the GM of that store came to our store and showed our GM the video.


Still wasn't fired.

Image credits: AlexanderHouse

#21

I work with this woman who should have been fired over a year ago, based on the company's policies. She was hired by her friend (surprise) and quickly figured out she doesn't have to do s**t because of it. We work in express restaurant, so lots of rules for good reason.

Just in the past 6 months she has caused multiple customers to complain about her specifically on surveys, caused other customers to call corporate to complain about her rudeness, broke a fryer, two thermometers, a sink, and 4 knives, opened the store with no paper towels or sanitizer (huge no no, we could have been shut down if the inspector came), oh and left the safe wide open and the doors unlocked for the entire night. This all when she was actually working and not hiding in the back texting or talking on the phone. No one knows how she isn't fired let alone demoted.

Another coworker and I were "promoted" to her spot with the promise that we would take her place when she was fired. We happily took on the responsibilities and waited for the actual promotion so we could have the titles and matching pay. Yeah she's still f*****g here, haven't gotten that raise or any of the others promised, and still technically ranked under her. I just saw I have to work with her tomorrow and I'm pissed.

Image credits: Queenofthebowls

#22

She got onto the library board, and when she was pushy before, she suddenly became super entitled.


* She reported me and another employee to our boss for "ignoring and mistreating an employee" even though we were just joking around with the patron while we were helping her, and she was playing along.
* She gave one employee an anxiety attack because she berated him every time she saw him for "not doing his job properly," even though he was a perfectly good employee.
* She kept asking pretty much everyone on the staff to give out other patrons' information, even though that's strictly against confidentiality policy.

And she was just generally a mean, miserly old witch hiding behind a thin veneer of sweet old lady. So I got excited when I didn't see her for a while and I thought they finally got her off the board. But then she came back from an illness and it turns out all of the staff's legitimate complaints can't unseat age, especially with a scarcity of other people wanting to be on the board.

Image credits: waterwaytogo

#23

So I work on a therapeutic campus and I run a unit that specialises in patients with severe learning difficulties, psychosis, paranoid schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. Some of our patients are known for being quite aggressive and extremely dangerous when they are unsettled.

We found out one shift that we will be having a new nurse with us on shift who isn't familiar with the patients/staff at all. How the shift works is that each staff gets given a patient that they stick with for a few hours before everyone rotates to different patients.

My coworker had just got his patient into the bath, so in the meantime he was cleaning that patients room. That's when the new nurse came into the room with that patients morning medication, having not seen the patients or the staff before, she thought that the staff member cleaning the room was the patient she was suppose to be giving meds to.

My coworker quickly realised that she was confused and started playing along, answering all of her questions and trying to imitate the patients behaviour. When she approaches my coworker to give him the patients meds, he put his arms up in the air and screamed "GET AWAY FROM ME" and started to run at her (which is something this patient use to do all the time). She instantly screams and drops the medication, she turns around and runs down the corridor screaming whilst my coworker was still chasing her.

After management had heard about all of this, he just had to apologise and luckily she saw the funny side of it. But holy s**t, places of care are usually super strict with that kind of thing so I'm surprised I'm still working with him to this day hahah!

Image credits: BlokWorld

#24

IT-guy deleted all bills of the last five days. The accountant came in and yelled at him for 40 min straight, went home and couldn't speak for nearly three days. Our CEO didn't fire the IT-guy because he was one of his friends. Other coworkers and I had to call about 200 other companies to ask them, if they have received a bill from us. At the end, somebody got the glorious idea to ask the mailman where the post sent those bills and saved our asses. If the taxman had found out about this incident... damn...

Image credits: asdlpg

#25

A guy I worked with got a dui in a company owned car with used car dealer plates on it, doing 75 in a 35 with 5 people in the car. He's is now the used car manager.

Image credits: anon

#26

Wow, a question that I have a really relevant story for:
So, I got my buddy CJ a job at my gas station and it's his first day. He was working a register and was doing pretty good. My manager was messing with the cigarettes or something behind us.
I hear CJ say from his register, "C'mon, Grandma, hurry up. You've used a debit card before."
My manager looked like a deer in headlights. Both of us just look at him. I'm f*****g FURIOUS that he just f****d up the job that I vouched for him to get. He looks confused for a second, then starts to chuckle.
It was his actual grandmother.
We all had a good laugh and it was a good day.

#27

Teenage coworker was told to go check and pull any expired or near expiration date canned pet food. Said coworker was not heard from for hours. Manager goes to check and teenager is sleeping, propped up against the food racks, while kind of half sitting in a carriage. I mean sound asleep! Manager gathers all other employees to come and look, we all laugh and make noise and he never wakes. Finally manager shakes him and he falls off cart. Manager tells him to go nap in his car. Teenager naps in his car for another hour, all while still punched in.

#28

Pizza place, it was a busy night and a couple Togo orders took too long, and the owner comes in raising hell with the guy rolling dough about ticket times. The situation escalated quickly and the guy started cursing back and forth with the owner.

Guy screams something like "F*****g fire me if you think I'm doing such a s**t job, old man!"

Owner: "Are you f*****g with me?"

Guy: "No, F*****g fire me, do it! I f*****g hate this job, hate my life, and I hate this F*****g restaurant! Fire me!"

Owner apologized later.

#29

Was on a big project where Clueless Manager (CM) was required to coordinate delivery of cement to a remote site. The remote site had its own deep water jetty but otherwise all of the equipment required to pump the cement off the ship needed to be in place so that the cement could be received.

Ship shows up. Trucks, crews, pumps and storage containers either not ready, still in transit or sitting around on site not ready for unloading.

Tempus fugits. Ship captain is having a f*****g fit and they're charging $25,000/day for demurrage on the cargo.

11 days pass. Owner of shipping line calls our Project Director, screams at him a bit and threatens to pump the cement out and dump it off the ship if the unloading doesn't start within 36 hours.

Several plane flights of equipment and crew later, unloading commences within 36 hours.

Total cost to the project was over $1,000,000.

The same or similar event happened 3 more times. Final settlement went to lawyers & mediation for over $4,000,000.

CM was never sacked. Figured he must have had pictures of the Project Director f*****g goats or something...

#30

At the same shop, but two different co-workers: first was caught stealing from the till twice, but was fired for not showing up (which is really essentially being fired for quitting). The other smoked cigarettes in the public restroom because he couldn't poop without smoking. Why he didn't just wait until he got home I could never figure out.

#31

I worked in a really small department (4 people), was the youngest by 30 years and also the newest employee...buy I picked up fast, which wasn't hard as 2 out of 3 of my coworkers could barely run a computer.

So about 6 months in my manager goes on a 2 week vacation, and during that time my boss has a sit down talk with me and the other 2 guys. I had to leave about 6 times to answer the phone/counter and every time I walked back in things were more and more tense.

I finally pieced together that the meeting was my boss telling these two guys 3xs my age and with seniority to me that I was in charge of them, even when the manager came back.

Jay was grumbling and cursing and my boss called him out on it, Jay told him he didn't want me in charge and if he and Ralph were such failures to just fire him because he was not going to get any better and he certainly wasn't going to listen to me.

I could see the words about to come out of my bosses mouth, but he refrained and didn't fire Jay. Jay did get fired for being incompetent a few months down the road though.

Image credits: anon

#32

The assistant manager at a pizza place I worked at got into a shouting match with a customer and told her he was gonna go p**s in her gas tank. It was over something stupid. Me and the GM were in the back and heard all of it. GM went and talked to the lady. Guy didn't get fired.

#33

Came in drunk, high, and she kept popping Xanax like candy. The manager just sent her home. She was 18.

Image credits: Zatalia

#34

We have a girl who calls out for almost every single one of her shifts. When she doesn't call out she begs everyone to take her shifts. Out of every 10 shifts she is given she only ever actually shows up for one or two. Whenever she does show up she almost always asks to leave early anyway for any of the many excuses she has up her sleeve.

She has received seven serious write-ups for her attendance/reliability. Most people are sacked after three serious write-ups. Somehow she keeps sneaking on by. Every time she gets another one I think "Okay this will be the one" but she still somehow works here. She was actually fired once in the past for these very same patterns but for some reason they let her come back only for her to pull the same s**t all over again.

Anyway, right in the middle of our busy season this most recent summer she asked for three weeks off. She was told that they would give her one week but anything more than that would be considered her resignation. So she took the three weeks off anyway, and during that time all of her scheduled shifts were left uncovered. That's at least 15+ no call no shows and we were always left understaffed and screwed because of it.

Yet after her little vacation she resumed working with no repercussions. Nothing was ever said about it. We've had to let people go for far, far less. I don't understand it. I like her as a person and when she is here she is a great worker but that's the problem, she's never actually here.

Image credits: GangrenousBoobs

#35

My company is so Topsy turvy. We are forever losing people and never can keep any new hires. One of my coworkers was sexually harassed and propositioned for "company" by a disgusting old f**k we work with. I was sure he was going to be fired for it. He wasn't. He was spoken to and that was that.

Image credits: Wackydetective

#36

Worked at a mall pretzel place. Assistant manager hated his life and was TRYING to get fired. Sparked up a joint under the counter and blew the smoke up toward all the customers above him. It hit me in my face as I was trying to cash people out and multiple customers commented, saying "what is that smoke?" or "what is that smell?" Stupid m**********r didn't even get reported (much to his disappointment).

#37

Morbidly Obese, obnoxious, b****y coworker: "why don't you quite smoking, you know that's gonna kill you"

Other good coworker: "trying to tell me to quit smoking is like trying to tell you to quit eating, both would do wonders for our health but are not likely to ever happen."

I thought for sure he would get the sack for some kind of harassment but never did, crazy

Image credits: Hav3_Y0u_M3t_T3d

#38

I might be late to the party on this one but here goes:

I had a coworker named Ron (name changed). Ron was a laid-back guy and you could tell that right away when talking with him. He was a very likable guy and to this day I'm pretty sure that's the only reason he was able to stick around. Anyway, Ron loved to talk. Like, non-stop. It was all or nothing for him: either he sat there quietly or he just kept on going until somebody stopped him. Well, our manager was the micromanagement type and would constantly get irritated with Ron not only for talking but for distracting the rest of us. She would yell at any of us for talking but she always let Ron get away with it a little bit more. One day, Ron was feeling especially chatty. He loudly admitted that he was high on percocets. After a few of us laughed, he told us that he gets high on Percocet every single morning before work. He told us that we had never seen him sober.

Cue my manager walking over.

She tells us to keep it down and get back to work, making no mention of Ron's comments.

But Ron just keeps on talking. About superhero movies, Netflix docs, Michael Jordan. Basically just a bunch of s**t that had no relation to our work.

Manager comes back over, tells him to be quiet again. This happened three more times before lunchtime finally rolled around.

Ron gathered his things and went to lunch. After 30 minutes, he hadn't come back. After an hour, he still hadn't come back. In fact, he still hadn't come back by the time I was ready to leave. After clocking out and walking downstairs, I see Ron passed out on one of the tables in the cafeteria. Showed up to work the next day and my manager never said a word, and everything went back to normal.

I no longer work that job but just before I left, Ron had been promoted. My mind was f*****g blown.

#39

This one still irritates the living hell out of me.

So I'm working 2nd shift till 10PM, and my coworker is supposed to come in at 9:30 to open up her register so I can close down. At 9:45 I try to call her cell, to see if she's just running late. It's been disconected. i give her till 10:15 to show up (we've all been late, no reason to have the manager give her a strike), then call the manager. No answer. I try 4 assistant managers, still no answer. I try everybody else who's capable of working 3rd shift (there's extra training involved before the store can let you work 3rd, per policy), and nobody can come in. Finally an assistant manager calls back, and basically begs me to work the 3rd shift, and passive aggressively threatens to fire me (we might have to make some cutbacks in the future, I'd hate for you to be one of them). I need the job, so I do it. The next day the b***h works (after I chewed out the manager and all 4 assistants for allowing this s**t), she tells me her second job offered her extra hours, so she took it. She missed her full-time job without calling off to go and strip. She wasn't fired because the manager would have to cover her shifts until a replacement was found.

Fun fact: I work two jobs. One full time 1st shift, the other part time at this store. I ended up working from 7AM on day one, to 3PM on day two. My only breaks were an hour each day to drive from one work to the other. Not counting those breaks. I worked 30 hours essentially in a row.

F**k you, you stripping c**t, and f**k management.

TLDR: Coworker skipped work to strip, I got stuck working 30hrs in a row.

#40

My coworker read a rumour on twitter that a celebrity was dead, didn't wait for confirmation from their publicist and put the story on the national wire of the country's largest news chain as breaking news. The celebrity called our office an hour later, very much alive, stating he was just in a dentist appointment. I have no idea how he didn't get fired.

#41

Underage new employee got caught drinking on shift in front of customers at a retail job. Later had to get bailed out of jail by a manager. Kept their job. How? No clue.

#42

Oh my god, f*****g Kevin.

I worked at a Target during my later years of High School and had a lovely coworker named Kevin. His parents were rich and essentially forced him to apply for a job to get a sense for the service industry since he would never have to work a day in his life. The whole "mommy and daddy are rich and I can sue you" cliche is true with this twat-waffle.

It was a regular day in the store, but at one point our manager asked Kevin to help stock the shelves for Valentine's Day. Apparently, Kevin bought some weed with his parent's money and decided to go to work as high as Snoop Dogg's bedroom. Kevin and I were stocking the shelves when I looked over at him, and there he was, breaking open the Valentine's heart-shaped chocolate things and slurping out the cream filling. By the time I saw him doing this, it was too late. He slurped at least twenty hearts dry.

At this point I am pretty pissed, so we get the manager over to knock some sense into him. Kevin is still high, but now decides to actually try to stock the shelves, since the manager was here. Kevin is a short little s**t nugget, so we needed a ladder for stocking the top layers. In Kevin's intoxicated waltz, he knocked a bag of candy off the top shelf and went down to get it before tumbling on his a*s right off the ladder.

The manager never filed a drug report to corporate for some reason, although I highly suspect it was because his family was rich and influential in the area. Needless to say, I quit that day.

F**k Kevin.

#43

There's two.

I work somewhere where at risk highschoolers come in to learn about working in a manufacturing environment and we train them in the abilities they'll need,

A disabled employee choked one of the students.

Another employee shut a machine that hadn't been down in over 14 years for three days because he did something with it that I told him the machine wouldn't do and he didn't want to listen to his trainer. (After no call no showing once that week and twice the week before.) That guy was a chronic f**k up and I was sure that'd be the last straw.

#44

Worked at BK, this guy catcalls ladies behind their backs all the time, and as she and her four daughters were leaving, he said: "Man, that a*s is just falling out of those jeans..." Lady heard him, turned around, and demanded the person that said it. Eventually, she kept driving around through the drive-thru, and taking pictures of us inside. I thought he was going to get fired for sure, but months after I quit, I checked back in, and sure enough, he was running drive-thru.

#45

Haha I have 2. Same company, 6 months apart.

1. My supervisor at a company that does contact work inside plants, we'll call him "M." M is notoriously bad with money, not malicious, just sometimes he really doesn't realize what he's doing. Anyways, he "borrowed" $500 from the company to treat our clients to a nice meal while he was on an out of town trip, ended up getting drunk and blowing it all at a casino. Company found out. All they made him do was pay it back. He still works there, and this was not his only f**k up.

2. Coworker at same company we'll refer to as "T." T, in addition to working at the company also owned a failing restaurant with his wife (it's legit, company knows about it and is cool with it) unfortunately for a while it was totally consuming him and his performance was failing. They decided they had to let T go. When T's supervisor, who was about 5'7" and weighed 150lbs tried to fire T, 6'4" and 300 lbs. T says, "welp, I guess I have nothing left to lose" and then proceeded to flip boss's desk 1 handed and literally pick boss up and pinned him to the wall before the rest of the guys in the office could pull him off. For some reason they decided to give T a second chance. He still works there.

#46

I use to work for a company that did inventory audits and we frequently travelled all over the state to do audits. There was that guy EVERYBODY hated because he was a giant douche/a*****e who I will call JD(Jumbo Douche). Well one night we had an audit in a city around 3 hours away in the evening so once we got done it was around 1am-2am so pretty much everyone was tired, and only certain people are allowed to drive the company vehicles we take to out of town audits. Well all the other people who were approved to drive were too tired to so JD said he would, after about half an hour on the road and everyone in the van fell asleep. Around this time JD thought it would be the perfect time to pull out the bottle of vodka be bought when he was filling up on gas and start lining up shots on the passenger seat. Fast forward an hour and everyone in the van get woken up by JD swerving back and forth on the road and nearly hitting the guard rail ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD. Well as predicted everyone in the van calmly and politely asked JD to pull over, then 2 guys politely pulled JD out of the van and attempted to calmly kick his head in. When we got back to the office no one wasted time to call our District Manager and try to get JD fired/arrested, only everyone in the van was telling different stories with each person exaggerating the events more than the pervious person in the attempt to make his punishment worse. Well since the stories were so different our DM couldn't use this as grounds for termination.

JD did eventually get fired because he would show up to audits and refuse to work because he had an injured shoulder, he injured his shoulder when the 2 guys in the van from the incident jumped him after work and dislocated his shoulder.

EDIT: I just remembered another from my time in retail.

I used to work at a store that specialized at selling video games but basically has since turned into a a toy store. Well like everywhere Black Friday is a super busy day and this year especially since we had some really good deals so the idea was to have 3 people working through out the day so we don't get overwhelmed by the amount of customers. So one of our supervisors who I call Tony was suppose to be on the opening shift at 6am decided that it would be a great idea to go out drinking all night on Thanksgiving with his brother until 5am. Well when Tony's 6am shift came around he stumbled into work still drunk off his a*s, as expected the store was nonstop busy since opening. To make matters worse the 3rd person on that shift decided he would rather sleep in and go shopping instead of coming into work, so the shift was only being covered by our Store Manager and a s**t faced supervisor. My shift was meant to be from 2pm to closing but they begged me to come in early so they can send Tony home, and when I got there the Store Manager was telling about it and how he tried to see if Tony could work drunk because there was no way he could run the Store by himself. The Store Manager told me that Tony would frequently just stare at the customer if they asked him a question, got "lost" in our tiny backroom looking for an Xbox, fell asleep on the toilet for 10 minutes, and tried to sell multiple customers the 100 mile warranty for their games. He finally sent Tony home once he got Assistant Manager to come in at 8am.

Tony and the Store Manager were fired a few months later when they got caught padding store numbers.

#47

I work in child care. One day we had a fire emergency during nap where all the rooms started smelling like gas. We wake up the kids in our room, get them outside and wait for the all clear. Five minutes pass and the fire fighters are carrying out a preschooler that had been left asleep on her cot and completely forgotten about by not one, but two teachers. Everyone was sure they were going to get fired, you know, for endangering a child's life in a fire emergency? But no. Just got "retrained" and moved from that room.

The next week someone else got fired for back talking a manager, but you know, who cares about the safety of the children? Just don't question the managers!

#48

My coworker had to substitute for me to do some technical services at a petrochemical plant. He instructed the customer to pump some chemical into the system to boost the pH. He however never told them to stop and they ended up pumping the entire 14,000 gallon container of chemicals into the unit which stopped production for 2 days, and they had to dump the solution in the process, which costs like $75000 or so to make. Customer was pissed and refused to pay for his visit. I am glad they didn't sue us. Meanwhile he continues to sit in his office and f**k up everything he touches.

#49

Violated policy and procedures constantly, in the same way shortly after being talked to about it. Constantly did a sloppy job then would dump it on somebody else. Denied it or played dumb if anyone tried to talk to him about it, supervisors had to have screenshotted proof if you reported his a*s for anything because of this. Lied to your face if you quizzed him about an issue he was trying to dump on you.

He never got seriously reviewed, written up or talked to because his buddy and roommate was one of the supervisors, who would intercept and handle any complaint about him. He'd always raise a stink if any other sups tried to mess with his many friends on the staff. This same sup would then turn around and persecute you if you reported his buddies. Guess why I don't work there anymore.

#50

Not my co-worker but my boss. He got the company sued for sexually harassment, he got switched to night shifts as a punishment and while there impregnated a 17 year old girl (IIRC he was 25). The owner decided to promote him back to GM and sent him to corporate training, where he got kicked out for having a hand tattoo and got caught smoking by the company VP. The owner then gave him money for a bus ride home. He ended up cussing the owner out for not getting him a plane ticket home and quit.

#51

I have one about myself. (TL:Dr at the bottom)
19 year old me back in 2008 got a job at a pharmaceutical companies as a tablet coater. I had been there maybe 4-5 months and work was slow. A guy in another department asked me to help move some pallets of calcium tablets with an electric pallet jack.

Being the young, curious man I was; I decided to see how high the jack went after double stacking some pallets. I was pretty impressed how high up this thing went, so impressed I forgot to bring it back down before moving. After going forward like 5 feet I took out a sprinkler head and was shocked when I got hit in the face and upper body with dirty water that hadn't been purged in 10 years (at a pharmaceutical company, which is questionable).

Anyway water just kept coming out, maintenence guy told me after the fact it was spraying 90-110 gallons per minute (~3.75 Liters/min for my non-American friends). I ended up losing the company around $200,000 dollars by shutting down several packaging lines and one manufacturing process. There was 2 inches of water on the ground. It took me and 2 other guys 3 hours to direct the water into the drains placed throughout the plant.

This was all at from 6pm to about 11pm. At the end of it, I sent a huge apology email to the directors of manufacturing and packaging who were one level below the president. They wrote me up and let me keep my job. I have no f*****g clue how because I was on probation from being a new hire. The only thing that changed was the training on the electric pallet jack. It now includes to check the height of your load, not just the width of the load for any obstructions.

TLDR: Newbie at pharmaceutical company broke a water sprinkler with an electric pallet jack and put 2 inches of water on the floor shutting down various operations resulting in 200k dollars of loss/damage.

EDIT - came back and saw all the comments.
1 - it would have been 375Liters per minute. I was corrected down below (had a few beers before typing this)
2 - to clarify: the estimated loss/damage was $200,000. My training was probably $8,000 - $10,000 just based off a couple months of hourly pay.
3 - I earned the nickname "sprinkles" due to the incident and everyone joked with me for the remainder of my time there. Myself and about 55 other people were laid off 2 months later because the company cut corners on an unrelated project and lost a ton of money. They also got hit hard by the FDA for the issues with thag project.

#52

Worked with an older doctor that pulled his c**k out to show a nurse. A day later we all get called in for the investigation. Then 12 of us have to do HR mandatory sexual harasent training and role play. Dude who pulled it out doesn't show up. He gets a week suspended for being a no show. Never does the class and then gets moved to department chair a few months later. Learned then that sometimes the world makes no sense.

#53

I work at a golf course and a coworker of mine flipped a brand new golf cart onto its side. It was raining out the asphalt was slippery and he was driving it down a slope. He hit the brakes and tried to drift but just put the cart on its side. My boss who was out golfing came in to see the damage (not extensive but a bit more than a scratch), and my boss didn't even raise his voice at my coworker, just told him to be more careful next time. We all thought for sure that this coworker was going to get canned on the spot.

#54

Let me start by saying I used to work for an extraction company. We worked with flammable gasses-- if safety procedures are followed it's safe...but if you eff up it could lead to an explosion.

We had a guy who should have been fired ten times over, but these are the worst. He showed up hours late, on days where we had time sensitive work that couldn't be completed without him, still drunk from the night before. We know that not only from the smell but because he TOLD us(including his bosses, the owners)!--Oh and one of those times he was coming down from rolling the night before...again he told us. One of those times he thought it was ok because , 'hey it was Cinco De Mayo' (it fell on like a Monday that year).This happened 3 freaking times and he didn't even get written up.

Then another time he left for a delivery that should have taken an hour fifteen tops. After a couple hours we started to get worried so we gave him a call, no answer. We even checked traffic accident reports we were so concerned. Then called the dispensary he delivered to and they said he made it and had left long ago...Ok so he's not answering his phone, he has $14,000 something in cash and the company debit card. He better have a great excuse or (hopefully) this jackass will finally get fired. 5 hours later he calls our boss back and says that he had some personal things to work out so he took off for the day. Like it was no big deal. They decide that's worth writing up, but decide not to fire him since he dropped off the cash and card at like 8 at night in their home mailbox. Are you f*****g kidding me?!
Finally, a few days later they 'fired' him when he just didn't show up ever again and told them he was looking for another job, but not quitting yet.

#55

Not my coworker but a friend told me this tale. Few years back. The guy was a little kiss a*s who has no opinion for himself. And he was a d**k to anyone else with any brains so that he could keep his superior position within his group. Well his supervisor had burned some bridges with his higher ups and kinda knew his time was limited. Well the supervisor found another gig and decided that since his research was his and not the institution he was gonna take it with him. So he got the kiss a*s to come in late during the weekend to help him physically carry out equipment. Anyone would have found this suspicious and said something. But he didn't. Following week s**t exploded and he was questioned and threatened t be sued. Well months later and years now he still has job with another group. Friend was pissed.

#56

Not my coworker, but a friend of mine pulled his d**k out while doing some stocking at a pharmacy. He helicocktered at another employee and got reported by them. When they talked to him about it he flat out denied everything. They gave him a raise and thanked him for his honesty.

#57

Co-worker pulled a no-call, no-show on New Year's Eve. This left the manager-on-duty and me to run the store completely on our own from 2 p.m. until we closed at 7. You wouldn't think that a pet store would be super busy on New Year's, but we were. And it seemed like every other person who came in needed a fish or some kind of assistance--I had so many customers get mad at me because they needed help in one department and it took forever for someone to come over, because there were literally TWO employees in the entire store and one of them (me) couldn't leave the register.

At one point, a customer's dog pissed in the middle of an aisle and she didn't clean up after it. All MOD and I could do for about an hour was set up a "wet floor" sign up next to the puddle, because neither of us had a spare few minutes to mop and disinfect the floor.

This same co-worker had already pulled a no-call, no-show in the past and had gotten sent home once or twice for copping an attitude with the managers. I thought for SURE that this last incident would be the final straw, but no. I had the next couple days off, and the next time I came in, the jackass was standing behind the register, reading a magazine because there was nobody waiting to check out in that moment and God forbid he find SOMETHING constructive to do.

He ended up quitting a week later, not bothering to give two weeks notice. MOD and I were happy to see him go. ?

#58

Bakery.
No call, no show. Doesn't respond to any text or phone calls made to him for hours. At some point he calls in from someone else's phone claiming his phone isn't working, he's sick and blah blah blah. Shows up 4 or 5 hours later, fully dressed in street clothes. Asks the woman working front counter if the owner is there today. She tells him no, so he walks out and leaves without another word. Never talks to the supervisor, or anyone else. Shows up the next day like nothing ever happened. What the f**k.