'He stole a bunch of bananas. Seriously.': 25+ Managers who had unbelievable reasons for firing an employee

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Dec 28, 2023 11:00 AM EST

Managers never want to have to tell an employee they're being let go, but sometimes their hand is forced. If the employee is talking back to customers or caught on camera stealing money out of the till, sometimes the manager will have to fire them for the good of the company. When u/edge231 asked, "Managers of Reddit, what is the stupidest thing an employee did that forced you to fire them?" there were over 15,000 people who chimed in with their craziest stories. 

Folks, today I learned a fascinating tidbit of information that I want to share with you. I myself don't play the lotto often, but I was stunned to learn that stealing a lottery ticket is a felony! The reason we're learning about that today is because one employee managed to steal a bunch of tickets while working in a cashier role. 

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  • This employee's method is pretty funny: he'd pretend to drop a big pile of tickets, then kick them on the floor to a camera blind spot. What he didn't know is that the cameras were not blind to those areas anymore! And presumably, he didn't know that he and his BF would be charged with one felony count per ticket. That sounded crazy to me, so I researched it, and it is true. Now all you candy bar thieves know that if you're going to pilfer, you'd better not take any lotto tickets with you. Try your hardest not to steal at all, and you'll never have that problem. 

    I'm also completely enamored with the assistant manager who would steal only $3.64 from the cash register each day in order to buy lunch at Taco Bell. He seems hilarious, and like he's the right amount of crazy. 

    After you read through these absolutely wild tales, check out the story of a boss who wanted graffiti removed in the silliest way possible. 

  • 01
    TOCOBI 'Boss had to fire a lady... because she lost her marbles when someone ate her bagel from the fridge'
    via No Revisions on Unsplash
  • 02
    Managers of Reddit, what is the stupidest thing an employee did that forced you to fire them?
    via u/edge231
  • 03
    NJtoTheBay Not a manager but someone was recently fired from my job for something so stupid it probably inspired a few dozen face palms. I work at a retail store of a very well known technology company. Customers very often trade in their old smartphones for a credit when they buy a new one. Protocol is to erase the old phone in the customers presence. One employee didn't erase the phone, went
    via u/NJtoTheBay
  • 04
    through the camera roll, found some pictures he liked (the customer was female) and emailed them, to himself, using the customers email account that was logged into the phone. The customer found the emails in her sent box and complained to mgmt. He was several levels of fired.
    via u/NJtoTheBay
  • 05
    pratorian I had an assistant manager who would short the till every single day $3.64, it was always the same amount and we could never prove it was him... even though it clearly lined up with only his shifts. Day or night. Until one day he came back from lunch at Taco Bell in our parking lot, and my other assistant saw his lunch and thought to herself "that looks good!" And walked across the
    via u/pratorian
  • 06
    street on her break and ordered the same thing. Her total? $3.64! She immediately came back and told me, I pulled all the drawers and sure enough one was short that exact amount! The kicker... when he was sat down by our DM to be terminated all they told him was "we know what you've been stealing!" And his response was "oh! You finally figured out I was stealing all those Skechers Shape-Ups?!" (for those that don't remember... those shoes were $130 a pair!).
    via u/pratorian
  • 07
    lestermason Every year during the holiday season, I'd warn the new hires, "listen, no matter how tempting it is, don't steal a customer's gift card. We can track it, I will track it and if I catch you, you will get fired. Every year people try it, every year people get fired. Don't do it." They do it anyway.
    via u/lestermason
  • 08
    WiFiForeheadWrinkles. A lady I used to work with got fired for doing this. She'd swipe to activate the gift card, charge the customer then did a switcheroo to give the customer an empty. She was smart enough to go to a different store to use the gift cards, but she was stupid enough to ask for an employee discount which required filling out a small card with name and employee number.
    via u/WiFiForeheadWrinkles
  • 09
    The manager that rang her through (only managers can ring through employees) noticed her huge stack of gift cards and got suspicious so she called our store, which had been dealing with customers claiming their gift cards not working. Put 2 and 2 together, and she got fired.
    via u/WiFiForeheadWrinkles
  • 10
    Machine GunTeacher New guy, around 20 yrs old or so, called in sick saying he thinks he had a stroke. Since he lived across the street from the store where we worked, we all then stood and watched through the store's glass door as he packed up his truck with beach gear and drove off with his girlfriend. Fired the next day.
    via u/MachineG*nTeacher
  • 11
    beeps-n-boops Girl decides to start stealing some of our products from the warehouse and sell them on eBay... as brand-new, with factory warranty. It only took a couple of weeks before we started getting calls for tech support for products with serial numbers we did not have registered as "sold" in the system. Brief investigation leads straight to her.
    via u/beeps-n-boops
  • 12
    She is fired (of course), and legal action pursued, but the sad angle to the story is that her father worked there too, and we were forced to make him stay at home with no pay until it could be determined beyond any doubt that he wasn't involved.
    via u/beeps-n-boops
  • 13
    [deleted] Offered a job to a candidate, but had to step out of the office to grab some paperwork. Came back and a bus pass that was on the desk was missing. Newly hired employee stole it. I asked him to return it because a previous candidate dropped it and he said he needed it more than they did and walked out.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 14
    racord360 I had an employee lock another employee in a closet one time. The person that was trapped called the police from inside the closet. It was quite an HR nightmare.
    via u/racord360
  • 15
    pawvel_catsyuk Forging a tip on a receipt. Like adding $20 wasn't going to get caught.
    via u/pawvel_catsyuk
  • 16
    Zeke219 Had a server drink out of the customer's Dr.Pepper and Coke to see which was which....in front of them...
    via u/Zeke219
  • 17
    Elim_Tain He stole a bunch of bananas. Seriously. It was a college dining hall. He was an employee of the dining hall, and got free meals while on- shift. He was not working that day, walked into the serving area, hid a bunch of bananas in his bag, and tried to pass the cashier only paying for what was on his tray. When confronted and asked if he "had forgotten anything, maybe in his bag?" He denied having anything else. Fired on
    via u/Elim_Tain
  • 18
    the spot. The worst part, he was on a meal plan (a kind of debit system, except you never get the money back at the end of the semester if you don't spend it). He had plenty of money for the semester. I have no idea why he felt the need to steal bananas.
    via u/Elim_Tain
  • 19
    [deleted] Back in my days working at a used car dealership, we had a teen come in and test drive a 1,500 (mile) Corvette, todays equivalent would be the ZR1. Anyway, the kid drives it around our set loop once, and is being a little waffley on if he wants to get it or not, he says it doesn't really drive as well as he thought it would.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 20
    My salesman told him it was user error, and he'd prove it to him, they went out for another loop around, with the employee driving it. He managed to get pulled over doing 135 (MPH) in a school zone, got arrested if I recall correctly. Needless to say, he was not welcome back at our store, however the teen did buy the car.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 21
    Shall-Not-Pass We put a a final warning and told her explicitly that ANY infraction would lead to her termination. Next shift we pass by and she isn't wearing a name tag on her sweater. We ask her to put it on. She peels back her sweater to reveal her name tag on the t Shirt underneath. We ask her to put it on the outside where it's visible. She refuses, doesn't offer a reason. Just says no. Goodbye. Stupid rule. Stupid reason to be fired.
    via u/Shall-Not-Pass
  • 22
    AtlantaPesto During my first real dev job, the company I was working for tried to implement a bunch of things to improve efficiency and employee satisfaction. Two interesting programs they implemented were 'work from home' and agile development, along with the requisite bullpens (shared team areas). What this basically meant is that we only had to show up in the office for core hours (4 hours) 3 days a week, and the rest of time we could work in shared areas, restaurants, parks,
    via u/AtlantaPesto
  • 23
    home - you name it. Sometimes, if you couldn't be at core hours, you would just dial in. We were young and excited and dedicated, so the core team really got a lot of good work done with this model. About two weeks after we started, our scrum master casually mentioned 'Has anyone seen Phil?' Phil was a quiet guy, and he was still answering emails and IM, so it took us a while to agree that no-one had actually seen him in a long time. She called him from the speakerphone in the bull-pen, and as G
    via u/AtlantaPesto
  • 24
    witness, here is the call that took place: • Boss: Hey Phil! What's up? • Phil: Hey Boss - not much, what's up with you? • Boss: Hey, we were just noticing we hadn't seen you much lately. You ever coming back in for core hours? • Phil: ...Probably not... • Boss: Oh... why is that? • Phil: Because I moved to Idaho. • Boss: ...But Phil, we're in DC?
    via u/AtlantaPesto
  • 25
    · Phil: I know. • Boss: Why didn't you tell us you wanted to move to Idaho? • Phil: Oh. Because I knew you wouldn't let me. EDIT: Oh snaps, I thank all of you for your sweet, sweet little up arrows. Many questions - let it be said that OP attempted to deliver: • Phil got fired. Fired as . Not for moving, but for the whole 'Because I knew you wouldn't let me' thing - management felt it was an integrity issue.
    via u/AtlantaPesto
  • 26
    garythedog Fresh out of college i worked in a call center for a mutual fund company. Job wasn't terribly hard, just placed trades all day and occasionally had to deal with a here and there. An older guy who sat around the corner from me was kind of sad looking and hated being there. He would put customers on mute and curse under his breath from time to time.
    via u/garythedog
  • 27
    Well, one day he had an older lady call in to place a trade to cash and she wasn't very pleasant. He hit his mute button but the phone didn't mute, he proceeded to call her an old nasty who will die alone until she interrupted him and said "excuse me?". To the old guy's surprise he asked her what she was talking about and said she was hearing things.
    via u/garythedog
  • 28
    She hung up and the call got escalated; his boss pulled the call and pulled him aside. He was told to just be honest and he wouldn't be fired. Instead of coming clean he kept denying it and the call was played back to him. Security walked him out right from the conference room. Ill never forget a Cesar salad sitting on his desk for the last 5 hours of the day. Rumor has it they put the salad in his box of belongings and mailed to his home address but i like to think its still sitting on that des
    via u/garythedog
  • 29
    Allthenamesareregone Guy hired to manage a store in a mall REFUSED to park in employee parking. As I'm sure everyone knows, mall employees have designated parking places, far from the choice spots near mall entrances. This guy refused to park there, and every time he parked illegally, the store got fined $100. And he parked in customer parking Every. 1. Day.
    via u/Allthenamesareregone
  • 30
    He was called out on it, the policy was explained over and over. He got written up. He was told that on the next infraction he would be fired. And he did it the very next day. Was totally blindsided when we actually fired him.
    via u/Allthenamesareregone
  • 31
    [deleted] Not me, but my boss. Boss had to fire a lady in our office because she lost her "marbles" when someone ate her bagel from the fridge. She literally had a tantrum, like a toddler. Also, the girl who ate it, ate it by mistake. She thought it was a bagel from the office breakfast we had earlier that same morning (it was in the same packaging as the office stuff). Now, I
    via u/[deleted]
  • 32
    absolutely hate it when people eat my lunch, but the girl who ate the bagel profusely apologized. Even stated she would go and buy her a new one right on the spot. But tantrum lady couldn't let it go. So, that ended up being her last night.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 33
    bbatwork Hired a girl to work in a bagel store, who on her first day told me she couldn't touch any of the meats because she was vegan. Had another guy show up for work his first day, was doing just fine, seemed to be good with the job. I went to the office to get some paperwork for him to fill out, and he was just gone. Never came back, didn't steal anything, no explanation at all.
    via u/bbatwork
  • 34
    jsrsd We kept finding stock discrepancies, we couldn't figure out for a while what was happening. The count on certain items was out (system said we had stuff that wasn't on the shelf). Eventually found that when a customer bought something with cash, later that same day the same cashier would refund the transaction for cash with no customer around.
    via u/jsrsd
  • 35
    They were fired on the spot - but couldn't be charged criminally because the way the camera sat they'd been able to block the view of the cash drawer with their body and you couldn't actually see them take the money out of the till. Even though we knew exactly when the false transactions were posted, footage placed them right there doing 'something' and intentionally blocking the view at that exact time, there's only one way everything added up but they still got away with it.
    via u/jsrsd
  • 36
    If they'd just been pulling cash out we would have caught it right away, but the counts were never out because there was a transaction in the system, so they'd been doing this occasionally for a couple months, we figured they'd gotten away with a couple grand. Return procedures changed after that.
    via u/jsrsd
  • 37
    knotclever1 I had a server tell a customer 11 he was "a "for ordering white Zinfandel.
    via u/knotclever1
  • 38
    Wheatly_breadington Im the assistant manager, but I just have to let this story go. Hired a cashier to help with shifts (and give me days off). After about a week the big Boss and I noticed that our lottery tickets were off, and J I one was even up(crinkly,scraped,torn). So obviously she has to go through our security tapes with management to find out the problem. So a a bit of back story before the next bit, the guy's boyfriend at the time used to have my job, and back
    via u/Wheatly_breadington
  • 39
    then the cameras were positioned differently. When he left, my boss had them moved to eliminate blind spots. So when big Boss and bigger boss opened up the tapes, they found this smart guy casually 'dropping' large stacks of lottery tickets, and then kicking them over to spots of the cashier area that USED to be blind spots. Not only did he get caught doing this, but because of the exact positioning of where he thought the blind spot was,
    via u/Wheatly_breadington
  • 40
    his boyfriend was charged too. Needless to say, he was fired immediately. Oh, and every ticket stolen is counted as a Felony. Each. Ticket.
    via u/Wheatly_breadington

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