'I did this for the last 2 years and no one said a word': Company Fires a Warehouse Employee Without Warning for Taking Too Many Smoke Breaks, Claiming He Was a "Time Thief" and Owed Them $290 in Labor Losses

Work can get boring sometimes, especially when the bulk of your job is to sit around and wait for things to happen. For one man, a warehouse quality control guy (u/Gasp32), his daily life was ruled by grueling 12 hour shifts, boring Excel sheets, and killing time while on the clock. Claiming he could do a full 12 hour shift in 4 hours time, Gasp struggled to make himself seem busy while he was clocked in and on the job and paid the ultimate price for following the habits of his other coworkers.

Gasp's team was made up of a lot of smokers who seemed to have an infinite amount of smoke breaks that they were allowed during the day. Gasp obviously thought that it was simply an unspoken rule that smokers could always take a break if they wanted a smoke (and their work was done), so he started taking more smoking breaks throughout the day. After two years of taking his liberties with his smoking breaks, the hammer of justice came down on Gasp… Hard.

He was fired for "time theft" because of his excessive smoke breaks.

Gasp of course was shocked that the HR team and loss prevention had been monitoring his breaks without saying a word. He would have been happy to recoup the loss and pay the company back for the lost time, but they wouldn't have it. It seemed as though the company was attempting to get rid of him for other reasons. Since the evidence against his excessive smoking breaks was indisputable, that was the route the company took to get rid of Gasp as an employee.

What's worse is that Gasp never had any negative performance reviews, never received a warning for his actions, and most importantly, was simply doing what everyone else did when their job was complete. Sometimes companies just use lame excuses to get their agendas accomplished, no matter who gets smoked in the end.

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Posted by Jesse Kessenheimer