People get sacked for all kinds of reasons: poor performance, lateness, violation of policies, ethical breaches, whatever. But have you ever thought about the record time some folks were shown the door?

"What’s the fastest way you’ve ever seen a new coworker get fired?" – this netizen took to one of Reddit's favorite communities, inviting its members to share instances of new hires getting axed faster than lightning. The thread garnered over 15K upvotes as well as 8.2K comments.

More info: Reddit

#1

Pizza delivery gig:

New guy on his first shift. Claims he's got previous experience, so doesn't need training.

Clocks-in. Grabs a few pizza orders ready for delivery. Leaves with his car to deliver. An hour later, the calls start coming-in about the status of their order. They haven't been delivered.

The guy just grabbed himself a bunch of free pizzas and left!!!

I secretly admired him!

Image credits: Sunless_Tatooine

#2

A coworker sent an email to a female team member that he had a dream the night before that they had gotten married and he "impregnated her".

She sat across from me and I literally saw her face as she read the email. A strange look came across her face, then she walked into the managers office.

She left the office and he got called in and less than a minute later was packing his things.

I believe from start to finish it took less than 5 minutes for him to send the email and get fired.

Image credits: CruelHandLuke_

#3

Worked for startups the past couple of years before I recently took a new gig but we had to hire about 100 people in the span of 2 weeks which I told my boss was a bad idea but the CEO insisted

Hired a young lady, she had a spotty resume but was very cheerful and friendly in the interview and my boss's instructions were if they are nice and friendly "pass them on to me"

we oversaw the customer service relations for this company

On her first day she came in 15 minutes late, got into an argument with a customer on her first training call and took the mic and farted into it as loud as I've ever heard a human being fart

We paid her for the full day

Best hire ever

Image credits: _Nolofinwe_

#4

We hired a director for our office. About a week later the women in the office were complaining about him, saying he was sexist.

Turns out he was in a meeting and a woman tried speaking and he told her that her opinion didn’t matter.

He was gone within a couple days.

Image credits: Burrito_Loyalist

#5

Day 1, delivering pizzas. I was the trainer.

Dude wasn't familiar with the town at all (this was before GPS was a thing).

Second delivery, he gets in the car, and proceeds to floor it in the parking lot, showing off all 80 horsepower for the 30 feet before slamming on the brakes to turn onto the main street, nearly hitting a customer and her young child.

I say whoah, slow down in the Parking lot, you almost hit that kid.

"F**k em" was his response.

That was his last delivery, lasted all of about 90 minutes.

Image credits: talontd92tsi

#6

We hired a woman who turned out to be pretty abrasive. How she got hired, I have no idea. Our secretary was the sweetest lady in the office and never complained until this new hire talked with her for a few minutes. Right after talking to this horrible person she approached the boss and said she would walk off the job if this new worker stayed on with us. By lunch half the office was ready to walk off the job because of this abrasive person. She just had an utterly horrible way of talking to people that made them feel degraded and enraged. She was let go at the end of the day.

Image credits: saltnotsugar

#7

In high school I worked at a clothing store as a cashier. Guy next to me has his sister come through with a huge pile of merchandise.

He scans one item that was on clearance for like $2 over and over again for everything she had, which was likely hundreds of dollars.

Didn’t realize the manager was standing right behind him.

“Go clock out and give me your name tag, you’re gone.”

He didn’t argue or anything, just put his head down and walked off.

The manager jumps on the register to clear the transaction out and the sister takes out her card, “This is gonna be a credit.”

Manager says “Not for $2 it’s not, get out of here.”

The sister actually tried to complete the purchase like nothing had happened lol

Image credits: Plantayne

#8

Worked 2nd shift at a factory. Late in the evening, we would prop open the doors along the side street to try to catch a breeze in the summertime. One night, this drunk guy stumbles in through the side door and just start striking up conversations with everyone like he owns the place. I run over and try to tell him that he can’t be in there, and he starts telling me he’s supposed to start work that night. We kind of argue for about 5 or 10 minutes about the fact that I didn’t have anyone new starting that night, and I finally tell him that he needs to contact someone in the office the next morning.

When I came into work the next day, the first shift supervisor told me that he was supposed to have a new guy start that day but he never showed up. I told him that the guy had actually shown up… 12 hours early and staggering drunk.

In a way, he was fired before his first day on the job.

Image credits: Phrobowroe

#9

When I was in college working at Walmart (cashier), I trained a girl on the register one evening. Maybe a week later, she comes through my lane buying groceries. I ask her how she's been, since I haven't seen her since the day after I trained her, and she tells me, unprompted, she's waiting on her court date.

One of her friends went through her checkout lane, but she only actually scanned about a third of the items. About $1,500 of merchandise went out the door free of charge.

My response out loud was, "oh". My response in my head was, "did you seriously not see the camera mounted above *every single register*???"

Image credits: Queasy_Box_3869

#10

New guy offered to pull a semi trailer to a dock for unloading. Said he did it in the Army all the time. I told him, nah, you gotta get tested out by the safety guy first, someone else will handle it.

5 minutes later, I see him pulling the trailer around anyway. OK, I gotta go tell this dude he's fired 2 hours in.

Before I could advise him of his updated employment status, the damn trailer came loose of the tractor. Slid right off the back.

He *did* know how to drive a semi. He *did not* know how to check the trailer was locked in.

Image credits: ginger_whiskers

#11

In fast food. A guy who thought he was a real ladies man (21?). Groped a few of the female coworkers butts. Then groped the boss lady’s butt. He was gone.

Edit: Forgot to mention, that was his first day.

#12

I know someone who was hired as a manager of some retail store Being the manager he thought he could show up whenever he damned well pleased on his fist day since he’s the Boss He showed up around noon and found the store closed. Turns out as the boss only he had the keys so the staff couldn’t open the store Big boss man didn’t have to worry about opening the store the next day. He no longer had a job

Image credits: lazynlovinit

#13

Worked in a sales call center about 10 years ago, real braindead work. New guy starts on a Monday morning, after he gets trained up on the basics (which takes about an hour), he gets assigned a desk and sets off to work.

30 minutes later, it looks like little puffs of steam are rising up from his computer monitor. Turns out he was vaping on one of those disposable ecigarettes, the kind that sort of tried to look like real cigarettes. He gets told by the boss that we can't vape indoors, and if he wants to, he'll have to go outside to do it on a break.
About 30 minutes later again, the same thing happens. He gets caught again, and is told in no uncertain terms that if he wants to keep his job, he'll stop vaping at his desk.

An hour later, he gets caught hiding under his desk vaping, and is promptly fired, all before lunch time. Dude could have just gone outside.

Image credits: Mr_Itch

#14

How about getting fired *before* you start working?

Our boss hired a new person - as a contractor, and he was available to work immediately, so he was scheduled to start work the day after his interview.

Next morning my boss turns up, very annoyed, and shows me his phone. The new hire had sent several rambling and confused SMSes that could be summarised as "had a few drinks last night, won't be able to come into work today, you know how it is".

My boss told him the contract was cancelled.

Image credits: BeerPoweredNonsense

#15

Hopped on the forklift with no one else around. "Been doing this for years," he'd told us.

Lift started leaking hydraulic fluid. Dude just goes about his business unloading a truck, handling orders and so on. Told no one. Sprayed that oily mess all over the entire warehouse until there was none left, went to lunch. There was literally a lake of it.

Had to shut down the warehouse for a week to clean it up. Tens if not hundreds of thousands in damaged product and late/cancelled orders. We asked him if he knew it was leaking. "Yes." We asked him why he didn't stop or tell anyone. "I wanted to get my work done so I could go to lunch."

Even after being fired, he still didn't think he had done anything wrong.

Image credits: bottletee0

#16

I worked maintenance on a golf course. The owner hired this really hot girl to be the beverage cart girl. She had no experience, but I guess it doesn't matter when you're really hot. After about an hour of training, she gets sent out on the course in a cart full of booze. Later on that day, we start finding random trash across the golf course, consisting of empty airplane bottles and both full and empty bags of chips. We follow the empty airplane bottles like Hansel and Gretel until we find the beverage cart half submerged in a pond. By time we figured out what had happened, she had jumped in her car and left.

Image credits: startinearly

#17

First day, her grandmother died. Understandable. Second day, her car broke down. Bad luck. Third day she had no electricity and couldn’t blow dry her hair. She was told not to bother coming in at all.

Image credits: exitzero

#18

6 hours. Call center job. She showed up to orientation on day 1 about an hour late. Hey stuff happens. Then we go on a 15 min break. She goes out to take a phone call, comes back in after about 45 min. We go to lunch, it's 30 minutes. She comes back over an hour later. We go on afternoon break, when the 15 min break is up, one of the trainers gets up and steps out in the hall and closes the door behind him. We hear her arrive and argue with him about 20 minutes after that. He comes back in and gets the stuff she left at her desk and we never see her again.

Image credits: misoranomegami

#19

We hired a new guy locally to help us do an audio/video system installation on a Navy base. We were a government contractor located near DC, and this installation was near New Orleans, so hiring some locals was commonplace for us.

The equipment had been delivered to a Navy warehouse downtown. All of it on pallets. We needed to break up the pallets and load everything into a couple of vans that we'd rented, so we could take it to the job site. Because it was the Navy's warehouse, protocol was to wait for one of their guys to drive the forklift.

New guy didn't want to wait, and jumped into the seat of a forklift. Said he had plenty of experience with forklifts. Proceeded to ram one of its forks through a very expensive new 80" diagonal plasma display. Panicked, and backed the forklift into the rear of one of the vans, smashing it in and destroying a taillight. Hopped off the forklift and said "Cool!"

All of this within the first fifteen minutes of his first day.

Image credits: ferddo

#20

Got a speeding ticket, 20+ mph over, in the company car picking up lunch for the staff. Day 1.

Image credits: TuPacSchwartz411

#21

I was training a new hire for a large online retailer who, at the time, focused on books CDs and DVDs. One of the books we shelved was on Germany's U-boats. He suddenly felt the urge to tell me about all the wonderful and misunderstood ideas der fuhrer had. He never even made it to his lunch break.

Image credits: Youse_a_choosername

#22

New guy came in to work hammered out of his mind and started trying to operate a forklift right in front of the regional safety manager.

A *lot* of forklift certified and "right in front of my osha handbook" memes were shared that day.

Image credits: Generico300

#23

I work in software engineering and a couple of times I've seen people let go after like two weeks because they just couldn't do the job at a all.

Not me personally, but a former coworker told me about an incident at a prior job where the person who showed up to work was *not* the same person they interviewed. Obviously they were immediately let go.

Image credits: Renmauzuo

#24

Guy lost his job before he even had it.

Opening in an entry-level position. Nepotism was big in this company. Current worker got his friend a job...all he had to do was go through the motions of the interview and check all the boxes.

Standard interview question: ***"What would you do if you had a disagreement with a coworker that you are unable to resolve"***

Acceptable answer is: ***"I would take it to my manager or HR."***

His answer: ***"I'd take him out back and beat the s**t out of him."***

Image credits: GrimSpirit42

#25

A guy at my work was caught playing World of Warcraft for hours each day. Boss called him in and told him that was wholly unacceptable and he had to stop immediately or he'd be canned.

Less than an hour later, IT calls the same boss and says the guy is back in his office playing again. He was let go that day.

Image credits: jpiro

#26

I used to work night audit/front desk at a motel adjacent to major highways. It was a super chill job, I loved my boss, and it was cool by me.

But God, trying to hire and train someone to take over my hours - once for maternity leave, and then when I was moving away - was a nightmare. One lady claimed to be computer literate, and then tried to use the mouse to physically touch the correct spot on the monitor when I asked her to click on a field. Another got extremely confused when I mentioned that sleeping with a guest was completely out of bounds. A guy got arrested (and fired of course) for selling drugs to someone out the night window. It was just an absolute s**t show.

Before I moved, I gave my boss a 2-month notice, because I knew hiring and training was gonna be a nightmare. About a week before my final shift, we finally got someone in place. She was more than a bit strange and could certainly have used a spot of mental health care, but hey, I can't throw stones. She showed up, grasped the basics of the job, etc. About a week after I left, I learned that she had quit because she didn't realize that night audit was a purely overnight job.

Idk.

Image credits: 50EffingCabbages

#27

A coworker grabbed my a*s, and when another employee confronted him about it, the first guy called the second a "lying [n-word]."

Image credits: BorkieDorkie811

#28

transferred to my pharmacy from another store and acted like she was the best thing that ever happened to that place. bossing everyone around, being condescending and disrespectful to everyone including those with doctorate degrees when she failed out of community college, being loud enough you could hear her outside (even with patient info which is a major hipaa violation) making mistakes constantly, refusing to accept the correction, lying about both important things and irrelevant stuff no one asked her about, you name it she did it. she lasted just under three weeks before she got caught for stealing controlled drugs. she’d take 1-3 bottles in varying quantities of different [medicaments] home with her every couple days and act like the distributor messed up. she’s in federal prison now :)

#29

Day 1 shot up right outside the building. Clocked in, went to work, was found an hour later slumped over a table slowly munching on stolen muffins like an elderly dog Clarification. Shot up, as in they injected [illegal substances] with a needle.

Image credits: Aetheldrake

#30

I was working as a stable boy, and I was showing the new girl around the stables. As I introduced her to the horses, she was very apprehensive to come near them, refusing to even step into the stall (she signed on to help care for the horses.)

Later that day, she admitted that the horses terrified her, so the boss let her go.

Image credits: AlternativeFilm8886