Getting fired is never easy but it’s even worse when you or someone you know gets fired for an unexpected or sometimes unreasonable reason. This thread where a Redditor asked, “What’s the most ridiculous reason you’ve seen someone get fired for?” is filled with some jaw-dropping responses. Here is what some people had to say.
1.“I had a supervisor who I didn’t like much but the reason she got fired was insane. She wrote an email to management about an obvious safety hazard, which was probably the only decent thing she ever did in that job, and security escorted her out when she arrived for her shift the next day.”
—u/ihopeyoulikeapples
2.“Not that shocking but still gets me angry to this day. A company I worked at prides itself annoyingly on us learning with a trial-by-fire approach. You just get staffed with another associate and learn as you go. As a more senior associate, I got paired up with new associates to be trained. I got one who when we started, I was told by the VP in charge of professional development to let her know if there were any issues because this guy was known (literally 3 weeks into him starting) for ‘not getting it.'”
“The first assignment I worked on with him, he was asking foundational questions. Eventually, I said this should be pretty similar across cases so if you remember from your first case and he told me he had no training on his first case. The other associate assigned to the project with him was on leave for the entirety of the case and whenever he asked the lead on the project for help, he got turned away and was told to ‘figure it out.’
I trained him again and he was a solid associate once he knew what he was doing but his reputation was tarnished. They let him go a few weeks later.”
—u/PhiloPhocion
3.“Over-performing. I shit you not. About 15 years ago, my cousin got fired from a call center manager position for this because her team’s stats were making the rest of the teams look like lazy slackers (which they apparently were) because her team’s stats were so far ahead of everyone else’s. Yet they were constantly riding everyone about stats, even to the point of writing up other managers for their low performance, so it was even more confusing that they fired her for over-performing.”
“She filed for unemployment, they tried to fight it, and I helped her with the hearing (it was by phone so I was just typing things for her to read or say), where even the hearing officer was shocked, not only because of the reasoning, but because they actually told the truth about it like it was somehow a bad thing and should be a reason to deny her claim. Needless to say, she got unemployment and had a new job about a month later which she’s been at ever since.”
—u/ThisAccountIsStolen
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4.“For crying after she got yelled at. Seriously the boss pulled one of the newer employees into his office and started yelling at her about what a bad job she had been doing. I’ll admit she wasn’t doing great, but the job had a learning curve and she had only been there about a month.”
“She started crying. We could hear the whole thing, as we could every time he did this to somebody. He was a real piece of shit, this guy. Anyway, the more she cried, the louder and angrier he got, and eventually he just yelled ‘GET OUT OF MY FACE YOU DON’T WORK HERE ANYMORE!’
I quit two days later with no notice. Three more people quit the next week. I was told they had trouble keeping a minimum staff for at least a couple of years after that. I stopped following the drama several years ago because I’m trying to not be such a petty asshole anymore.”
—u/macaroni_3000
5.“I saw a girl get fired from the office I worked at because she wanted to use the microwave to heat up her lunch — that was HER FIRST DAY! The office manager hated the smell of food in the office, so everyone had to eat out, even though we had a fully working kitchen.”
“So, the new girl got into an argument with the office manager, shouts were shouted, screams were screamed and the newbie was called down by the HR.”
—u/ChangetheGame20
6.“Someone I knew worked for a huge religious ‘charity’ working security in the homeless shelter they run. The shelter collects donations all year, including food. When people donate food that can cause allergies, they do not include it in their Christmas hampers, they throw it in a dumpster. Perfectly good food thrown in a dumpster instead of gifted to their residents or donated elsewhere. So this guy I knew went dumpster diving after his shift. Got fired over a box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates that were in the garbage anyways. They called it ‘stealing’ and somehow still think they are a good charity doing ‘the lord’s work.'”
7.“A woman got fired because her daughter was sick too many times. Here in Germany, when you are a parent and your kid gets sick, you are allowed to stay away from work or get a home office, so that you can take care of it. But if your boss gets suspicious because it happens too often, then he can fire you. Her daughter has a heart problem, and that means doctor appointments, hospital visits, and so on. Her boss knew that already because she worked there already over six years (her daughter was already born before she took the job). But he played the asshole and threw her out. She sued his ass off for that.”
—u/DarknessOfYourSoul
8.“I got fired as a long-term temp back in 2002 when the company I worked for didn’t have separate logins for the computer, and a coworker accessed porn on the shared login computer we used. He blamed me even though I had caught him looking at it. They fired me because he was permanent and I was temp, even though my stats were also kicking his ass. Ridiculous! I was so pissed.”
—u/funkcatbrown
9.“I got fired from a summer camp I worked for when one of the campers who is autistic was being bullied and no other counselor was stepping in. The boss of the camp said a little bullying never hurt anyone and boy did those words come back to haunt them. I managed to hide a tape recorder in my pocketbook when I went to work the next day. As I had hoped, I was called into the boss’ office and was told I was fired for interfering with the problem the other day.”
“I had hit record on a tape recorder before going in, and I got the boss again to repeat what they said to me the previous day and it was all the evidence needed for the parents who thanked me for helping their child. In the end, both the boss as well parents of the bully and the camp all paid a hefty price with the camp being shut down and me getting a good share of the money paid to the family as well myself when the court ruled the family was discriminated against and I was wrongfully terminated for doing the right thing.”
—u/Goddessviking86
10.“My boss got fired for posting a YouTube video on Facebook. We had a strict social media policy.”
11.“One time someone nearly got fired over using a gift card a customer gave them after using most of it. The gift card had like six cents on it.”
—u/TrickyPickle1773
12.“I was given a different position than I was hired and trained for. This different position barely had any work. I’m saying I’d be done with my entire workload within three hours of clocking in. I kept going to my boss to ask for more work. After a few days of this, I was let go — for asking for more work.”
—u/3fluffypotatoes
13.“I got fired because I wasn’t keeping up with others. We were filling pallets to be moved. I was filling fewer pallets than the others. The problem was that I was working by myself, and everyone else was working in pairs. I was doing it more efficiently and getting twice as much stuff on a pallet. So in reality, I was doing as much work as two other people together.”
“I think the supervisor just didn’t like me. But he wasn’t my supervisor, nor did he have the authority to fire anyone. I was supposed to go work in another department after this project was done. This guy ended up getting fired for pulling this.”
—u/theFooMart
14.“This guy was in charge of new employee training and making all their travel arrangements. Instead of giving the hotel meal vouchers to the employees, he proceeds to gorge himself every morning at the breakfast buffet. A couple weeks of that and the hotel staff caught on because of how much food they were going through. I received a picture from the hotel management of the guy mid-bite asking if he was one of our employees. I went to HR and they walked him out of the building not long after.”
—u/ootenworpin
15.“A female employee got a foot tattoo. She worked at a beach restaurant and they could wear sandals. The owner slut shamed her and fired her…over a shamrock on her foot.”
Have you or a coworker ever gotten fired for something unreasonable or wild? Share it with me in the comments below!
