58 Times People Got Fired So Spectacularly, HR Will Never Forget It

I'm in the military, so getting fired is a whole thing, but one particularly memorable one was a Navy guy who worked in my mission center. We were in charge of operating multiple mission systems, but one in particular pissed him off. It was hard to operate, the UI was complicated, and it crashed all the time. He had degrees and certs out the a*s for like every IT/cyber/programming displicine known to man, so one day he decides to basically go in and change everything. How it operated, how it output reports, the UI, everything.

Now, this is the government. The fact that it now ran better, was more user friendly, was more secure, and didn't crash once after he did this didn't matter. He touched their toy without asking and were out for blood.

Now, I was Air Force, but we were occasionally invited to watch Captain's Masts (non-judicial punishments) done, and I went to his.


He had a chance to save his career, but his ego got the better of him. The Captain asked him point blank, "Do you think you are smarter or more qualified than the men and women that designed that system?" To which he responded immediately, "Yes, sir."

He was immediately separated from the Navy.

Now he's a millionaire in Silicon Valley who designs mission systems for the government. Go figure.

Not a coworker but a client:  senior VP called into helpdesk at 9pm on the verge of tears asking us to recall an email shed sent.  By the time she called in it had already been viewed by all the recipients so unable to recall.  She just barked "*OH MY GOD*" and hung up.

Next morning found out that shed emailed a really dirty email about an upcoming business trip her and the CEO were soon to be leaving for.  Lots of details in all the "fun" they were going to have.

Oh BTW, they were married....just not to each other.  Oopsie daisy!

She resigned in disgrace the next day.  CEO took a leave of absence for a "Family Emergency" and handed over the reins to the CFO.  About 3 months later CEO was out and CFO was now CEO lol.

Oh what a tangled web we weave....

Dont use company email to talk about f*****g your married boss on a business trip!

My brother was fired for banging a co-worker; but they disguised it by saying he was interviewing and taking other job offers (which was, and is legally allowed to do in our state). So they fired him before he could resign.

As splash damage I was fired too. I was working under him. I had only been there a year or 2 and had no intentions of leaving. They simply let me go because it "might be weird" if I came in.

We sued them for wrongful termination and now I have a new kitchen.

One woman in our office decided to turn over her office for a bit of spring cleaning. She discovered a device taped to the back and bottom of her bottom desk drawer. It clearly had a microphone of some sorts. Our IT team was quickly involved and we were worried it was corporate espionage. They were able to trace the device that was in communication with the spyware. Turns out that another guy in the office had put it there so that he could "listen to her voice" throughout the day. Guy was fired immediately.

Many years ago I was a Fire Alarm Inspector. As we did initial inspections (new construction or simply took over inspections from another company), we'd inventory and barcode all of the alarm equipment. These barcodes would be scanned with a PDA as the unit was being inspected, and we'd enter the test results. Normally we would have a 2 man crew, but we had an older guy who had been with the company for decades and could knock out inspections solo in about the same time it was taking our 2 man crew so the bosses let him go out on his own.

One day the office got a call from a nursing home admin saying our guy was sitting in the parking lot asleep in the van. My helper and I were closest so we went out to check on him, and we found him snoozing away with a binder on his lap full of sheets of barcodes. Like... 30 or more. He had been going to sites, putting the barcodes on the paper instead of the devices, and then would just sit in his van and scan a few every couple of minutes. Over time we had to go back out and redo some of the inspections and found all sorts of crazy situations that he had been passing for years... like passing a dry sprinkler system that was not even connected to water and the air compressor had been ripped out. Huge fire violations.

I worked in recruiting/worker placement. I placed an IT guy in a big corporation, 1000+ employees. Worked nights. Apparently, he moved into the lactation suite of an unoccupied floor of a large corporate high rise. He would come to work early, stay late, work really hard - company loved his performance. He'd badge into the on-site gym and shower. Had a bed, fridge, hot plate, tv, ps5. He lived rent free for 8 months before the construction team finally stumbled upon his setup when they were renovating that floor for a new business.

The company spent a week collecting evidence about his coming and going and finally had to fire him. Security even helped him move his stuff out vs just throwing the man's life away.

He called me right after he got fired and asked for a new job. Got him an interview the next day and he just went on with his life.

NGL, kinda g*ngster if you ask me.

A customer who was a prpblematic frequent flyer at our restaurant told a new girl to take his food back and have a "prettier girl" come back and serve him.

He had been such a pain in the a*s to many of us that our manager would have banned him for that, but Carly decided to take his plate chuck it on the floor, breaking it. She then told him to find that girl his f*****g self and stormed out.

It was fantastic, if not a little bit of a mess.

Bar manager in a popular tourist trap restaurant was one of the hardest, harshest and scariest dudes to work for. Once you proved yourself Mike had your back without questioning, but he would light up newer workers up for not paying attention or doing dumb stuff. General Managers and owner loved him because Mike and the bar could handle absurd rushes on Thursday/Friday/Sat evenings.

One evening a customer complained the margarita was "weak", we signaled Mike to come over, he said to the customer "hi, I put tequila in your drink, do you make Margaritas at home?" Customer said "yes and they are better than this." Mike said "this ain't home and you paid $7.00 for a Marg, why don't I give you your money back and you can take that 7 bucks and make your own drinks....your cut off."

He yelled to all the bartenders. "NO MORE DRINKS" and pointed.

All the bartenders nodded.

Turns out the customer was friends with the owner and the owner came over later and spoke with Mike to apologize. Mike walked up to the customer and said "I'm sorry about my temper", pulled out a wad of chewing tobacco from his lip and put it in their drink. The owner turned green and said "wow Mike, that'll be all, you're done working here."

The customer was pissed.

Mike was technically fired that night and rehired the next morning.

Another time a customer said to him, "haven't you heard the phrase the customer is always right?"

Mike said nah, "the customer is always an a*****e.".

Technically this was my direct report, but I had to fire a guy for his body odor. I gave him multiple warnings. I bought him soap. We had conversations with HR. It wasn’t a religious or cultural thing. He assured me there were no issues with his mental or physical health. I did everything I possibly could to make the situation better.

I finally decided I had enough when a pregnant woman on our floor threw up because of his body odor. The security guy who walked him out asked our office manager for a mask with an exhalation valve.

Nice guy who was good at his job, but it was so bad people were threatening to quit.

Not sure they were terminated yet but they were suspended without pay pending an investigation.

I work at a rehab facility and one client is known for being trouble so hes eyes on 24/7 even when hes asleep. Someone literally sits outside his open bedroom door and watches him. We had an overnight staff come in from one of our other programs (not a rehab one apparently) and he left his backpack in the hall outside this clients room then left the client alone and went to the bathroom. The client found pot gummies in the backpack and ate the whole bag. The staff either didnt notice (yea right) or didnt want to admit that his gummies were stolen so it was only discovered when the client admited to still being high the next day.

Who tf brings pot gummies to a rehab in a state were they arent fully legal?

At a tech job years ago, guy showed up to work packing his personal computer, 2 27 inch monitors, a sound bar with subwoofer, and set everything up on the conference room table to play World of Warcraft at full volume while boss was gone on a Saturday. There were 3 others of us working our as*es off and boss found out how busy we were. Boss came in to help unannounced and caught the dude gaming. He got fired instantly.


At the same job, two guys got fired on the same day when one sold d***s to the other right in clear view of a security camera.

Guy was super annoying. One day he told one of the waitress that we need to just call MLK Day what it is N-Word Day. Hard R and everything. She calmly says “You know my husband is black right?” Fired on the spot.

A coworker of mine spent every day emailing his colleague that sat next to him. They used keyboard shortcuts they did it so often.
On one occasion he was a bit to cavalier and added another recipient by mistake.
The message he sent was "You c**t"
In a panic they checked the recipient and it appear to be an empty contact.
The next day they were both called in to meetings.
It turned out it was a mailing list that forwarded the message to every store manager in the company.
The best part was the guy had an email signature. So that morning every store had got the message

You C**t

Yours sincerely
Joe Bloggs.

Worked in a smallish office with 3 of us on Zoom calls with clients a lot. I was eating my lunch at my desk and my other two colleagues were on calls. There’s a loud rasping sound coming from the corner, the sales guy had give face first into his pasta lunch and was snoring.

After much shaking I managed to wake him, he said ‘Huh’ and then re-faceplanted his food again.

Then the manager find a bottle in a brown bag under his desk.

Didn’t finish the day.

Probably the time this guy that showed at the office with a g*n because someone stole his Snickers the previous day.

He used his corporate credit card to fly himself and the exotic dancer he just met to Vegas to get married.

I used to work on a dock for a major logistics company.

They hired a fresh out of high school kid with no forklift experience, gave him the bare minimum of training, and sent him on his way.

A minimum of 3 days a week, sometimes more, he would puncture something and spend the majority of the day cleaning it up. One day it was paint. The next day it was bags of green dye. Almost everyday there would be some giant mess coming out of one of the trucks, and you would find him inside covered in what mess he made.

And then one day, he just disappeared. We all assumed the obvious. I was small talking one of the managers later on when I asked what happened to the kid. He immediately starts laughing, and pulls me aside.

Apparently, he was caught shoplifting a few expensive items, in his company branded work gear. When asked by security why he did it, he replied, “I’m a supervisor. It’s ok.” They called us, we obviously denied it, and that was that.

I used to joke that I should become a supervisor to get those secret shoplifting perks.

A guy was getting shown around the store on his first day getting introduced to people. They took him over to the outdoor garden area where he was going to stock plants, pots, and stuff. The trainer left to go use the restroom, and when he came back the guy had a bl*nt lit up while talking to an elderly lady about pansies. He was there just under an hour total.

I was working at a Top-40 radio station many years ago. We hired this kid - 18 or 19 years old - to host evenings. This is long enough ago, that there were a LOT of younger listeners at night. He was the only one in the building during his show.

This kid was from a larger city than ours, and was full of attitude. To say his approach on air was “aggressive” is to put it mildly.

It didn’t take long, and half his show was hitting on girls, and then getting into verbal arguments with their boyfriends. He’d record the arguments and air them; it was a dumb bit, but it fit what he was doing, and it seemed to be working.

Until the night he told one VERY ANGRY young man that after his show, he was going to come over and “c*m all over your mom’s face.” He aired this.

The next morning, there was almost 200 complaints waiting on the voicemail at the front desk. The operations manager and program director called him to come in early that day, and when they started talking to him, they found out he’d been letting girls in the building at night. They were of…questionable age. He was fired on the spot.

He left town the same day. We were sure it was the last anyone would ever hear of him.

Until the little f****r turned up on a top-10 market morning show a few months later.

Security supervisor and then peace officer at a hospital for years. Security will often just take anyone with a pulse so I have a million.

Zone supervisor was visiting site and was talking to the guard in the detox unit. They were talking loudly in front of the patients about how they didnt need assisted detox, the just needed to find jesus. 

Same unit one of our patrol guards kept pissing all over their bathroom floor and lying about it being him doing it.

Guard had been borrowing airpods from lost and found to listen to music on patrol and returning them to lost and found each day (claims he was returning them at least) but the guy came to pick them up while he was on patrol. He panicked and ditched them in the dumpster. Find my phone or whatever was able to track where they were and we went back in the footage and saw him dumping them.

ER bottle recycling was saved up and used by the hospital to buy small toys for a toy box for kids waiting in ER that we could hand out to upset kids. One of the guards loaded up his truck with all the bottles and turned them in himself. 

Not on my site but a Guard turned up for work at another site we had. Then got a call from another job he had so called the supervisor and was just like "so yeah im bailing to go work a different job" and refused to even wait for a supervisor to relieve him. Eventually he called scheduling asking why he hadn't been offered shifts recently and they were just like "didnt you quit?" He took it up the chain in corporate and somehow got rehired for a while before getting fired for something else.

Same guy on my site got banned from one of the units for harassing a nurse (wouldn't stop hitting on her and texting her after hours after she made it clear she wanted him to stop). STILL wasn't fired. Would only take shifts as a patrol guard (whole site) and not as a watch guard (1 on 1 with problem patient) so he never worked on my team because I wouldn't take a guard that wasn't even allowed on one of the units and let them work on my team.

He did eventually get fired but the amount of s**t that one guard got away with was mind boggling. Must have been very close to someone high up.

Another guy started with us and all throughout his training was talking up how good he'd be at the physical side of the job because he did MMA. I repeatedly told him if he tried MMA s**t on the patients his a*s was out the door. He got fired for excessive force.

One of my favorite pass times back when I did that job was b***h about all the absolutely bottom of the barrel people we had coming and going. .