What's the dumbest reason you ever got fired for?

[Quiet Stranger]

That title may be vague but what I mean is, have you ever been fired for an EXTREMELY stupid reason?

Let me begin, I work at a Target and I may be getting fired this coming week because on November the Second... I bought a toaster oven. I BOUGHT it, I didn't steal it (I can't emphasize that enough) and I may be getting fired for it. That's the short story, the long story is the process I went through to buy it, taking it out of the backroom, putting it on hold, and buying it on my break well apparently I broke 5 or 6 store policies (violated) and I may be fired for it, all because I bought a toaster over.

So what stupid thing(s) have you been fired for?

 

[DudeistBelieve]

Some guy broke into my stall while I was on the can and we nearly came to fisticuffs.

Thankfully, were union and nothing was caught on video tape so it was literally my word against his, and he portrayed himself as a nutjob, so they just moved me to a new store.

I've had this job since I was 18, I did a lotttttt of stuff I wasn't suppose to when I was a young moron that I managed to get away with. At a certain point I realize that meant that this is a job I should really want to hold on to, probably the best place to work in retail.

 

[Zontar]

I wasn't interacting with customers enough. Which was odd because I worked in the storage room in the back of the store. 90% of the time I was on the floor, it was because I was either 1) coming in to work, 2) leaving work, or 3) moving something that was too big for the other stockboys to handle but too small to justify using the loading bay.

Now that was the official reason though, and from what one of my coworkers told me it seems all part timers get fired by that manager around the 4 or 5 month mark due to the company having a policy of adding 2$ to your hourly wage after 6 months and then adding a bit more every 6 months after that. Seems they have but really hate part timers, and only use us because they can't find enough full timers to fill all the jobs (that and part timers are easy to replace since there's always more jobless high schoolers).

 

[xDarc]

Some 60 year old man asked me where the hand sanitizer was. This was some years ago, 2001 I think, and I'd never heard of hand sanitizer before. I directed him to the aisle where the soaps are and he said not soap, hand sanitizer. I just shrugged and said it's probably going to be with the soap, which it was. He then yelled at my manager "Oh my god what have you got fucking retards working here?"

I looked at my manager and he clearly was not going to do anything so I just said, listen old man, I don't appreciate being called a fucking retard and if you say one more word I'm going to follow you into the parking lot and kick your fucking teeth in. Look on the manager's face was priceless. As the manager ushered me into the back the old man remained silent. Totally worth it.

 

[Kopikatsu]

I reported employee theft to the person who was allowing some of her friends steal from the store. (Since she was my supervisor).

's all I got.

 

[Sassafrass]

I was fired from a job because I thought my dying mother was a more important thing then flipping burgers.

The manager did not.

Needless to say, he did not appreciate me telling him to stick his job up his arse and told me to never show up again, so I didn't, except to hand my shit back and say bye to the people there who weren't cock juggling thunder cunts.

 

[tippy2k2]

cock juggling thunder cunts.

If the world blew up today, I could die in peace having seen that. Now the tricky part is figuring out how to use it...

OT: I was "fired" (I was a temp so we don't get "fired", we have our contracts end but it's being fired in all but name) because I asked if we were allowed to dress up for Halloween.

Honestly, in retrospect, I 100% realize that I was just a shitty employee and they evidently needed any reason for me to go away. It was the best thing ever for me because I never realized I was a shitty employee until afterwards and now I'm at my new job where they actually will talk to you and tell you what you're doing wrong rather than bounce you department to department. I will never bank with those people after seeing the way they treat their temps and my current employer is awesome. Everyone wins!

 

[Remus]

For being sick, as in, deathly, cannot move my arms or legs, or talk beyond the occasional "Gwaaahhhh" when my needs weren't being met. This happened in the summer when I was 16. I caught some mutant version of the Spanish flu - dunno what strain I had, just that I easily could've died. I was bedridden for a week, could barely move for another week. My brother-in-law got me the job so he kept the bosses apprised of my situation. When I was finally well enough to go back to work, one of them met me outside and told me I was fired. I've never been fired since - if I found a job untenable, I walked off before the drama can happen.

cock juggling thunder cunts.

If the world blew up today, I could die in peace having seen that. Now the tricky part is figuring out how to use it...

Like this:

Spoiler

 

[Quiet Stranger]

Well I have good news and bad news, I wasn't fired but I still got a "final warning" so if I ever go through the process of buying an item like how I did with the toaster oven, I will be terminated immediately

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I'm disabled and have used the city's paratransport service to get to and from my first job. The problem is, those freaking shuttles take forever to reach my front door in Quebec's typical January-to-March hyper-snowfalls. One supervisor pulled more seniority and didn't believe or understand me when I explained that it wasn't my fault if I was ten minutes late for the sixth time. The other believed me, but didn't have enough pull to defend my case.

I was put on hold for most of the following summer, maybe coming in for contract work a week or two in all of three months. After that point, I was basically starving and back onto the parents' financial crutch. As this means I was mostly well-off again, the asshole supervisor assumed I wouldn't be needing the job anymore.

I was never fired so much as they just stopped calling me in. It lasted almost six months, before I mostly caved in and wrote a fairly scathing email asking them to nut up if what they wanted was to push me out of the payroll.

They fired me after that email. Been doing independent contract work as a translator and copy editor ever since, and I've gotten used to almost perpetual Lean Cow years, since then.

I really need to start sending out resumés again...

 

[Starbird]

That title may be vague but what I mean is, have you ever been fired for an EXTREMELY stupid reason?

Let me begin, I work at a Target and I may be getting fired this coming week because on November the Second... I bought a toaster oven. I BOUGHT it, I didn't steal it (I can't emphasize that enough) and I may be getting fired for it. That's the short story, the long story is the process I went through to buy it, taking it out of the backroom, putting it on hold, and buying it on my break well apparently I broke 5 or 6 store policies (violated) and I may be fired for it, all because I bought a toaster over.

So what stupid thing(s) have you been fired for?

Never been fired, fortunately. Although I came bloody close once when I was a waiter - I quietly drank two Smirnoff Ice in the bathroom after a party had left them opened but untouched and got into an idiotic argument with the manager. Amazed I didn't get the sack (I did get a stern shouting at by the owner) but...well, that was a crap job anyway

 

[Starbird]

Well I have good news and bad news, I wasn't fired but I still got a "final warning" so if I ever go through the process of buying an item like how I did with the toaster oven, I will be terminated immediately

If you don't mind me asking...why? I mean - what policies do they possibly have that would prevent you from buying a toaster during your own time?

 

[TWRule]

As far as being full-blown 'fired', it was probably for arriving 5 (or fewer) minutes late to work three times within my first 3 months at a job. The rationale for that policy was that it was a store in a mall, and the mall's policy is that if you don't open by a certain time in the morning (I was an opener), then the store is fined $100 for each day that occurs. My being a few minutes late, of course, never resulted in us opening late - I would just work that much faster to make up the lost time, but that's how the policy was justified.

I was late because I had to use public transit (~1 hr. travel time+) to get to work. The first time I was late, it was because the bus came very late that day for some reason. The two other times I was late, it was because construction was going on along the bus route in front of the mall, and it slowed things to a crawl. I tried to leave earlier to compensate for such things but it still wasn't enough. The manager was very strict in following the letter of the policy and firing me, despite my actions not costing them anything. I feel as though she just didn't like me that much and was looking for an excuse.

Then there was a time I was almost fired from being a U.S. federal census enumerator (the guys who go door to door conducting the survey). The reason I was (nearly) fired was because there is a policy that says you must succeed in completing the surveys for so many residences per hour, and I was falling slightly below that. The reason is because you are assigned certain neighborhoods to visit, but often people are either not at home (there is a thin margin of time between when most people get home from work and when it would be inappropriate to knock on their doors, plus they are often eating dinner at some point in the meantime - and I worked in an area where people commute long hours, so they may not get home til early in the morning), or people will refuse to answer the door or otherwise take your survey because they detest the federal government and people who work for them (which is way more people than you might think). They sent a supervisor out to go around with me (who just made my job harder because he was an overbearing prick to me and the people I was trying to ask to take the survey), and together we still didn't have any better luck. So they withdrew their threats to fire me.

So yeah, basically was almost fired for sheer bad luck.

I also had an absurd lay-off situation, but I already talked about that over in the thread about quitting jobs, so I won't go into it here.