'[He] just wanted to see how many free burgers he could eat before getting canned': 20+ People who couldn't make it through a single day of work before getting fired

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
May 15, 2024 3:00 PM EDT

If you ever feel like you're failing at your job, these stories will make you feel like a model employee in comparison to the folks who couldn't make it a single day. That's right, some people get fired from their jobs before they can even meet everyone in the office. It's rare, but it happens, and it's often memorable. You know it's memorable when more than 23,000 people replied to u/roor1337's query: "People who got fired on the first day of the job, what happened?"

Some people get hired for jobs they just aren't right for. For example, one office hired a woman to do some data entry. It's not the most difficult job in the world, and workers usually have to know how to work with spreadsheets, answer emails, and be very organized. When the woman showed up to work, their coworkers were horrified to realize how underqualified she was. When she was told to Google something, she wondered aloud what that was. Things did not get any better from there, and once the boss realized how she'd lied about her qualifications, she was shown the door. You can check out that story and numerous others below. 

Up next, an impatient DIYer confronted a teenage "employee," demanding help loading 30 bags of concrete onto his car… too bad the kid wasn't actually an employee! 

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  • 01
    People who got fired on the first day of the job, what happened? 'While fixing a turkey sandwich, in plain view of the customer... she kept popping peices of turkey into her mouth and eating them'
    via Eaters Collective on Unsplash
  • 02
    People who got fired on the first day of the job, what happened?
    via u/roor1337
  • 03
    SirChoGath Not me but a guy I knew. I work in the Oilfield. New guy comes in on night shift. I tell him to go check the giant oil tank to see how full it is, it's a tank as big as a house. He looks down inside it, and uses HIS LIGHTER to get light... Nobody was killed, his job was eliminated for safety. reasons.
    via u/SirChoGath
  • 04
    [deleted] I showed up and the guy that was supposed to train me got fired. No one else was available to train me apparently, so they told me I was no longer needed. I was to young to put up a fight, or ask for any alternatives.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 05
    [deleted] Put unleaded gas into a diesel truck.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 06
    deftss They called me and told me I was let go for not showing up on my first day. Which was a surprise for me since at no point after the interview had I been told that I'd been hired.
    via u/deftss
  • 07
    what_the_puck Worked at Pita Pit in college for a day. About halfway through my first shift, the manager asks if I have a car. I said yes, why? He said I had to go get it and deliver for him til close because the driver he was into called out because she was too hungover (She said this on speaker in front of like half of the people waiting in line and everyone else who was
    via u/what_the_puck
  • 08
    working). If I didn't, he said I was fired. He also told me I had to pay for my own gas and give all tips to him since I was still making 8.20 an hour instead of the 4.50 the drivers made plus tips. He handed me seven bags and a list of mapquest directions to them, three of the deliveries 10+ miles away (Furthest being 17 miles in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania that
    via u/what_the_puck
  • 09
    just screamed DELIVERANCE SCENE). Boss called me not even 15 minutes later screaming at me for not making all of the deliveries yet and said that once I came back and gave him his tips, I was fired. With
    via u/what_the_puck
  • 10
    five deliveries left to go, I said II || and went to my friends place with the rest of the food. that manager.
    via u/what_the_puck
  • 11
    Sir... Not me, but I got my roommate a job with my company after he graduated from the same school with the same degree I had. He graduated a semester later and due to my internship. with the company I was able to "put in a good word" for him. He worked as a contractor for a few months until he finally landed a full time position. He and I were
    via u/SirTyronne
  • 12
    living together again so we would drive in together. On his first day, he was called into a meeting. Fifteen minutes into the meeting, our manager came out and asked me to drive him home. Wouldn't say why. Found out they believed he faked his diploma as it read "awarded posthumously" (after death). He was obviously alive and I watched him take and pass most of his
    via u/SirTyronne
  • 13
    classes. Turns out the school up and he's getting some big settlement out of it.
    via u/SirTyronne
  • 14
    oograh I kind of inadvertently got a guy fired on his first day. I was working at a factory job. I had been there a couple years at this point. They had just hired a new batch of people. One of the people they just hired (let's call him Ed) I knew from school. He was a strange dude. He always had an off-putting smile on
    via u/oograh
  • 15
    his face, like he just and is waiting for you to smell it. He also thought being "friendly" is punching your arm, which always was annoying to me. I think he wanted to be friends in school, but it just didn't really happen. We were cordial when we met in public, though. Anyway, Ed gets hired. He sees me and come over to talk for a bit. When he walks
    via u/oograh
  • 16
    off my supervisor pulls me to the side and says "If that guy messes with you let me know". Okay. Weird, right? Later that day, he is being. trained at a machine behind me. We were running different parts, and mine runs slower. He decides that means I or something. He walks up behind me, slaps the back of my head. (hard enough my hat goes flying off) and yells "hurry
    via u/oograh
  • 17
    up, slowpoke". My job was working with torches, so needless to say that me off. At lunch time I pulled the supervisor to the side and let him know what happened, and that it was dangerous since I am handling dangerous equipment. He tells me he will take care of it. I come back from lunch, and Ed is being escorted out of the building.
    via u/oograh
  • 18
    Come to find out Ed thought it would be cool to "brag" to my supervisor that he used to kick my in high school all the time. As far as I knew we were cool. I had no idea that he told them anything of the sort, because it didn't happen. So, when I complained, he was insta- fired. They were protecting me from my high school bully that I didn't even know existed.
    via u/oograh
  • 19
    Intergalactic_Feta I was a hostess at Applebee's for a day once. I was busing a table and dropped a cup and whispered II || They never even told me that they fired me. I found out by going into work the next day to see me not on the schedule. I tried to talk to managers and everything
    via u/Intergalactic_Feta
  • 20
    no one would tell me that I was fired. It was like a bad break up with mind games and eventually I had to force myself into the GM's office and made him explain to me what was going on. Shadiest. ever.
    via u/Intergalactic_Feta
  • 21
    blank_mind I wasn't fired on the first day, but I saw someone get fired. I got a job working in a grocery warehouse, driving a forklift in the freezer section. This freezer was supposed to be kept at -20°F, which means they actually kept it a little colder (I once saw it at -46° on a rainy day).
    via u/blank_mind
  • 22
    Day one, as I'm getting a brief tour around the place by a rotund middle- management fellow, we see a group emerge from the freezer, one guy in the middle clutching his mouth, tears in his eyes.
    via u/blank_mind
  • 23
    Y'know when kids dare each other to stick their tongues onto poles during winter? This guy did that of his own volition, in this incredibly cold room, and had to wait until someone stumbled upon him for rescue. He was fired on the spot.
    via u/blank_mind
  • 24
    [deleted] I got hired as an "independent contractor" for some over the phone tech work. Hours were 8am- 6pm. Ok, that's perfect. I go in and get acquainted, start taking calls, and hours go by. I'm wondering when I get lunch. News flash. No lunch, no breaks. Independent contractor or not, pretty sure here in the U.S. you gotta give people some
    via u/[deleted]
  • 25
    breaks and a lunch at some point in a 10 hour shift. Some kinda law about that I feel sure. So I tell my new boss, look, I'm starving, I'm going to get something to eat, I'll be back in an hour. He said if you leave, don't bother coming back. So I left. And never went back.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 26
    Pokiarchy I got a job as a waiter at an Australian themed steakhouse (no not that one). They had me buy construction boots as part of their uniform and a pair of black shorts totalling $50. I had never worked as a waiter before so they had me shadow one of their waitresses. I followed her for
    via u/Pokiarchy
  • 27
    drink orders at two tables and then she told the boss it wasn't going to work out. No idea what happened, and that was my last $50. In retrospect that place just screams "You don't want to work here" but I'm still mad about it a decade and a half later.
    via u/Pokiarchy
  • 28
    [deleted] Used to work at a factory that made food stuff. Guy I was trained with fell into a big vat of wet ingredients that was about to be heated up. Had I not looked behind me, he would've died. The boss went to the hospital to tell him he was fired but they were giving him some extra pay in his check.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 29
    I got a job at a daycare cooking food. I ended up getting strep throat prior to my first day. They fired me after I told them I couldn't come in because I was contagious
    via r/AskReddit
  • 30
    [deleted] i got a seizure while serving someone at a new restaurant. it was my first of a 3 day trial period so I dont think i was technically on the books yet. needless to say they never called me back
    via u/[deleted]
  • 31
    [deleted] When I was in between jobs, and early in my tech career, took some temporary work. Among this work was a manufacturing outfit that needed a few thousand records digitized. Upon the early part of my discovery I found that they already had most of this data in a giant flat file, and were bringing in only two new pieces of unique data. I
    via u/[deleted]
  • 32
    I found a few correlation points with just a glance, and immediately started scripting. It took around 4 hours to get my script ready, and then all I had to do was enter two pieces of unique info per record, and the script would take care of the rest. This was going to be a huge time saver, likely cutting the 5 day job to 1.5 or 2 days. I would be paid the same either way, and
    via u/[deleted]
  • 33
    would be out of their hair days early, so I figured it was a win-win. The lady in charge of watching me asked me right after lunch on that first day how many records I had completed so far, and I answered her honestly. I had done 4 records (the ones I had tested my script against), but was going to blast through hundreds before that business day
    via u/[deleted]
  • 34
    was done. I went back to the desk and computer they had provided me, and started banging through the stack of records. After I had only done about two dozen of them a security type showed up, and escorted me out while muttering something about non-performance. I asked to be given 3 minutes to show my script to anyone that cared, but they were. not interested at all. I was marched out the side door,
    via u/[deleted]
  • 35
    and was never again used by that temp agency. Those folks just did not understand what I was doing, or how powerful scripting is. All they knew was that I spent the morning doing something other than the mind numbing data entry that they had hired me for.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 36
    NoxWild Janitor job at a hospital, cleaning bathrooms in the patients' rooms. An old lady laying in her bed called me over and said she was born in Germany and she'd learned to speak English but couldn't read it very well.
    via u/NoxWild
  • 37
    She had a get-well card from someone and asked me to read the poem inside. I did. Someone reported me because I wasn't supposed to "interact with patients." Got fired before lunch.
    via u/NoxWild
  • 38
    down_vote_magnet I'm a developer. We hired a guy who did an amazing interview. He really seemed to know his stuff and was clearly very intelligent and capable. On his first day he saw some old code in a legacy app which wasn't great and he went Like, began ranting at his desk, then stood up from his
    via u/down_vote_magnet
  • 39
    desk and started shouting at his screen, then started verbally abusing the developer he thought had written the code (he hadn't). The other developer just sat and took the abuse calmly and tried to explain it wasn't his code, and anyway we knew it was old and poorly written but there was no plan for the team to rebuild it, etc. But it was futile and he barely got a word in with
    via u/down_vote_magnet
  • 40
    the other guy just shouting him down in an endless tirade. He had a full meltdown and was beyond civilised conversation. Project manager had to intervene and have an emergency meeting with the MD and the developer. They mutually agreed he wasn't. right for the company.
    via u/down_vote_magnet
  • 41
    The guy eventually said he had Aspergers and had left many jobs for the same reason.
    via u/down_vote_magnet
  • 42
    Su... I almost got fired at Subway for putting too many olives. on subs. For the record it was 6 olives per footlong and 3 per six inch. Anyone knows how ridiculously stingy that is! Also if they wanted extra olives they had to pay, and you were allowed to give double that, and that's it! I pleaded to keep my job and only followed the olive rule when the manager
    via u/SuedeVeil
  • 43
    was around though.. I piled them high for customers I liked edit: I should say it was the owner (since it's a franchise), not the manager who was strict about this. The manager had to enforce the rules but even she bent them. The store actually switched owners while I was working there and the second one was much more lenient, thank god, and let
    via u/SuedeVeil
  • 44
    us put a reasonable amount of olives on
    via u/SuedeVeil
  • 45
    Ha... This was about 10 years ago, and not mine, but a homeboy of mine got an awesome job at a tech company out here in Cali... We're talking B+/A- level job. with big name company not more than 6 months out of college. His resume was outstanding, his interviews were amazing, and he impressed all of the Directors at the
    via u/Harvey_BirdmanESQ
  • 46
    "Handshake" party. After spending a full day (literally) there, he was given the offer letter. He got everything he wanted. He was given the 5pm HR paperwork treatment, shown his future office, introduced to the office pool, and was formally announced through company e-mail. He shook hands for the last time around 8pm, and walked out the front door to his car.
    via u/Harvey_BirdmanESQ
  • 47
    My friend couldn't contain his excitement and he did a burnout in the parking lot as he was leaving. He figured the parking lot was empty, and no one would notice. He got a call the next morning, "Based upon your reckless actions last night in the parking lot, we've decided to terminate our working relationship."
    via u/Harvey_BirdmanESQ
  • 48
    mo... I'm late but I have a really good one, not of me being fired but of someone I fired about 4 hours into their first day. When I was in school I worked as an assistant manager in a deli. In all those years, this one girl stood out as the absolutely worst employee imaginable. She was just SO stupid.
    via u/moby323
  • 49
    Things she did: 1. Customer comes up and asks for an extra side of ranch dressing. We had those little plastic dressing cups all over the place. But does she use one? No. Her solution is to grab a napkin and pour some ranch dressing on it and hand it to the customer like that.
    via u/moby323
  • 50
    2. When it was a bit slow I said, "Hey why don't you take a moment to wipe down the tables. ". Obviously, I meant the empty tables. But I look over to see a whole group of customers cradling their food and drinks in their arms because she has asked them to take all the stuff off the table so she could wipe it down.
    via u/moby323
  • 51
    3. Like most restaurants, behind the counter and in the kitchen we have floor drains. This is so that at the end of the night when we wash the floors, we can use a copious amount of water to get them really clean and then squeegee the water into the floor drain. So a customer comes up and says he got the wrong drink (diet vs
    via u/moby323
  • 52
    regular or whatever). I said, "Just pour it out and give him what he asked for". Rather than take three steps to the sink to pour the drink out, she turns around and pours it into the floor drain, getting soda all over the floor and splashing it onto our pants. 4. While fixing a turkey sandwich, in plain view of the customer and
    via u/moby323
  • 53
    myself, she kept popping pieces of the turkey into her mouth and eating them. 5. Customer walks up to give her order and she says to her, "Do you mind if I go to the bathroom real quick before I take your order? I gotta go really bad. II 6. Customer asked for black pepper on his sandwich. At the time,
    via u/moby323
  • 54
    it was the holidays, all of our salt and pepper shakers were these unique Christmas ones. You know, one was Santa Claus, one was Rudolph, etc. She literally comes up to me all frustrated and says that she can't tell whether the shaker in her hand is salt or pepper. I grab it, shake a tiny bit into my hand, and say, "It's salt...."
    via u/moby323
  • 55
    7. Customer asked for an egg white omelet. She asked me if he still had to pay for the whole egg. 8. Customer asked for a medium coffee with "part skim milk, part whole milk". She poured the coffee into two separate cups. One with skim milk and the other with whole milk.
    via moby323u/
  • 56
    9. Final straw: In the middle of taking an order, she pulls her phone out and answers a text. The crazy part was when I told her that she should just leave, it didn't work out, and she shouldn't come back, she kept acting like it was my fault for not explaining stuff to her. Like the rule that you shouldn't answer a text in the middle of waiting
    via u/moby323
  • 57
    on a customer, or that she didn't know we weren't supposed to use the floor drain to pour out drinks, or that she didn't know she wasn't supposed to ever tell a customer that she had to go to the bathroom, that she didn't know there was a rule against eating the turkey off of a customer's sandwich. And yeah, she was a college student.
    via u/moby323
  • 58
    Shaw-Deez Worked at a Burger King one afternoon when I was 17. About three hours into the shift, a girl I knew from school pulled up to the drive thru window. I ran over to the window and proceeded to lay the mack down on her. "What's up girl? How you doin? You need the hookup? I got the hookup. You need
    via u/Shaw-Deez
  • 59
    some napkins? I got napkins." I must have handed her a stack of a hundred napkins and multiple straws. But sensing that she wasn't impressed by my napkin game, I stepped it up and handed her a toy from the kids menu toy bin. She smiled at me. It was awesome. Seconds later the boss approached me and asked how I was going to
    via u/Shaw-Deez
  • 60
    pay for the toy I gave away. "Aren't they a dollar?" I asked. He then told me to go home. Returned a week later to pick up a paycheck for $14. Then i wound up spending it. all while I was still there on chicken nuggets.
    via u/Shaw-Deez
  • 61
    mungchamp New girl stretched her 1 hour lunch break to 2.5 hours on the very first day. She apologized and said she was shopping and the lines were long. We accepted her apology and told her we hoped the unemployment lines were not as long and showed her the door.
    via u/mungchamp
  • 62
    soomuchcoffee Obligatory not me, but we had someone come in and interview for a data entry and research job one time. I have no idea how she passed the typing test, but that's basically the only prerequisite to getting this job, a certain amount of words per minute. I have no idea how she passed the test, because we
    via u/soomuchcoffee
  • 63
    soon found out she did not know about the internet. Like, on the first day of the job "ok just search this in Google and.." "Google?" "Yeah a website...?" "Website?" My boss was dumbfounded. She was in the office long enough to be introduced to people and sat down at her desk. Maybe 2-3 hours tops.
    via u/soomuchcoffee
  • 64
    This was probably around 2005 or so. It wasn't some elderly lady.
    via u/soomuchcoffee
  • 65
    jiggywiz Was 17 and kicked out of school, so I decided to get a job at telemarketing company cold calling people to try to sell them chimney cleaning services, offering the first cleaning for free. It was extremely awkward speaking to those people on the phone and trying to offer something so obscure. So after the first five I just pretended to be speaking to
    via u/jiggywiz
  • 66
    people on the other line while I was actually talking to a dial tone. Did this for about 3 hours. I went to the bathroom, on my way back to my desk the supervisor stopped me and said "Hey, I don't think that this job is for you" Not sure how they might have known. Looking back I understand why he looked at me funny if I asked I would be paid for the 3 hours that worked.
    via u/jiggywiz
  • 67
    azr... First day of training at an office supplies retailer. Things to note: I was super nervous and hopped up on caffeine (probably related), extremely addicted to cigarettes (I have next to zero willpower whenever a craving hits), and I have pretty bad social-anxiety. The combination of these qualities served as a catalyst for the following incident:
    via u/azraelpariah
  • 68
    A couple hours into the shift, all of the managers and trainers were occupied by a sudden influx of customers (it was during "back-to- school" season so the store was busier than usual), and I was left alone in the break room and told to read some training modules on the computer. After reading one or two, I get hit by a craving to smoke, probably amplified by the caffeine in my system. I noticed a door
    via u/azraelpariah
  • 69
    just outside the break room and figured it must be the employee entrance, so I decided I'd just take a puff or two just outside, not intending to be gone for more than a few minutes. As I go to open the door, the fire alarm goes off. In the whole store. The employees at this particular establishment all wear earpieces connected to radios, and I immediately
    via u/azraelpariah
  • 70
    heard a cacophony of outrage and bewilderment explode inside my head. I still had the door propped open with my arm, and just sort of stood there completely frozen, listening to the angry yelling of people I just met in one ear, and the shrill, incessant screech of the alarm in the other.
    via u/azraelpariah
  • 71
    At that point, something primal erupted within me, and I went full flight-or-fight mode. I ripped the radio off my belt, dropped it on the ground, and made a break for it. I threw the door wide open, and booked it out across the back parking lot at a full sprint. The far edge of the lot is bordered by tall hedges, and as I reached. them I looked back and saw two managers standing outside the door behind me,
    via u/azraelpariah
  • 72
    calling something out that I couldn't quite hear. After pausing only a moment, | plunged into the bushes and vanished, never to return. They didn't try to contact me again either. I can only imagine what they thought had happened. tl:dr accidentally set off - fire alarm, fled in terror
    via u/azraelpariah
  • 73
    To... Interned at some startup. Got hired because of my multimedia skills, can help in a number of areas. I offered to make a musical sting for their company logo. I spent an hour on it and then showed the manager and the owner. They loved it! Lovely.
    via u/Tomusina
  • 74
    Later that night, I said to the manager, "so like if you use this do I make any money off it?" The manager guy goes, "haha yeah you'll get your million." I respond with "actually, my quote is a million and a quarter!" And we laughed and we laughed! Good times. Then he left, and I did some more work, learning some equipment and such. I was the last person in the office, on my first day.
    via u/Tomusina
  • 75
    Next morning my internship coordinator calls me up says "WHAT HAPPENED?" I call back, "uhh.. huh?" I'm told that I demanded money, and made threats of litigation, and that I was fired. I mean maybe I shouldn't have asked about money, but I'd never interned anywhere before, and HE started the joke about money. Yeah, I have no idea
    via u/Tomusina
  • 76
    what the happened in that guy's head that night.. TL, DR: unpaid internships are a scam and don't do it
    via u/Tomusina

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