40 Times People Were Stupid Enough To Do Something Inappropriate That Their Bosses Just Had To Fire Them

It’s fair to say that most of these career faux pas shared in this post are somewhat on the extreme side. From extremely rude messages to inappropriate comments shared out in public, these behaviors are the straight way to getting fired, and there’s little doubt about that. At least they don’t happen that often and when they do, they end up stirring things up quite a bit in forums and online threads.

But there are so many more less extreme and more standard ways to fail at work. From letting your team down to screwing things up on a deadline, even the best worker wasn’t born immune to failure. But for many devoted workers, such experiences may end up ruining their self-esteem and professional motivation. So how to lift yourself up when things went down the drain at work?

To find out, we spoke with Sarah Jones, a career and leadership coach with over 7 years’ experience as a top executive leadership and career coach and a 30-year career at board level. Sarah assured us that there’s no such thing as failure, unless you fail to learn from your experiences. The career coach reminded us that there will always be challenges at work. “I firmly believe that when we are sitting too comfortably, we don’t push our goals forward—we don’t really grow or develop. So I believe that failure is instrumental to our growth.”

Sarah recounted “starting work with a new manager with a very different, introvert style. I thought I’d never last with him, but in fact—he got me to slow down and become a little more focused on the details. Also, when I was made redundant, I didn’t take it personally—my attitude was ‘yes, a clear sign to become self-employed’—and I’ve never looked back. So look at what did I learn, what would I do differently—this isn’t about blame, but about personal reflection.”

Maybe you are in the wrong job, wrong company and you’ve been putting off leaving so things are not going too well, Sarah argues. “Perhaps you made a mistake—own up, apologize if you need to, and clearly communicate what you will do differently next time. Reframe it in your mind, don’t tell yourself you are a failure—say to yourself, I’ve had a setback and I’m moving forward, I can learn from this—something more positive,” she said.

Even though failures at work are particularly painful and hard to heal from, they happen more often than we’d think. Nearly every client that Sarah talks to is going through a challenge and they always learn. “That’s part of my role—to help them to understand any repeating patterns or behaviors that may be holding them back,” she said.

“When we fail, and learn and acquire new skills, or grow from it, we develop a steeliness,” Sarah said and added that it’s “a resilience so sometimes the more challenges we have, the more we can overcome situations that would ‘floor’ some people.” According to her, many extremely successful people had several attempts at what they were trying to achieve before they got there.