20+ Employees share coworkers they saw get fired on their first day: 'Drove a skid into the side of the house we were working on'

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Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
May 31, 2024 10:00 AM EDT

Throughout the course of your working life, you'll undoubtedly meet some interesting folk; having wacky coworkers is just part of the whole deal—heck, you might even be one of them. Some of these souls might work with you for ages; they might have already been a part of the furniture when you started, but some of them will shine so bright that they don't last a fortnight, and some still won't even make it through their first day.

Surely, in order to get fired on your first day, you'd have to do something truly tragically bad; it's not something that happens every day. My own contribution to this subject is that I know someone who was fired from their first job at a diner back in the day when they accidentally dumped a milkshake and its tin on a seated customer.

Readers of this online community gathered to share the legends that they witnessed coming to be with their own eyes, stories that would surely be told for an age afterward. Told to newcomers as both a warning and an initiation to the workplace.

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  • 01
    "Drove a skid into the side of the house we were working on." UCB
    via Samuel Cruz
  • 02
    People who've seen someone get fired on the first day, why were they fired?
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 03
    Mokelachild Nurse who failed his drug test on the first day (he did the test days prior, we got results on his first day). He replied "yea, I thought that might happen" when he was told he failed his UDS. Just turned around and walked out.
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 04
    HeadFit2660 New substitute teacher fired on day 1 for writing "BE QUIET" IN SHARPIE on 2 kids foreheads Leprikahn2 This is wrong on many levels, but it is funny 408wij Agreed. Should've written it backwards so they could read it in the mirror.
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 05
    711minus7 First day: IT guy made his computer's desktop wallpaper a fb pic of a female co-worker he had just met.
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 06
    gladgubbegbg Reminds me of a story I heard, dude was hired as a tester in the IT department. Apparently he made an excel file and ranked all the women in the company (there are a lot) from most to least fable. He didnt realize that the OneDrive was shared with the entire company (over 300 people) and clearly said who had created the document Imao.
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 07
    shastabh Was in the local Walmart needing to take a leak. Walked into the bathroom to a manager and employee staring down a stall covered in . The manager was explaining to the dude that cleaning job description. The guy is in the responded, well I'm sorry that this is my first day, but that, and walked out.
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 08
    SoupIsFor Winners 5 days ago • I hired temp for data input. Her first day a guy pulled me aside and said, "She can't be here." Apparently one of our full time employees had a order against her employee home and apologized, then called her agency and told them she was not welcome back. Not sure what the order was for but my guess is stalking. bbcllama She knew what she was doing.
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 09
    Panther81277. Homeboy was allowed to play music on Bluetooth for the restaurant on the first day; went to the bathroom and started watching and forgot he was still on the speakers. Hilarity and dismissal ensued.
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 10
    Langstarr I was bartending at a sports bar in Hells Kitchen. New guy training first day, supposedly several years of experience. He attempted to shake a jack and coke, and of course covered the bar in his mess. Didn't come back for day 2.
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 11
    crepelabouche Worked with a bartender who asked, "What's in a rum and coke? Someone just asked for it." That bar was known for hiring dudes cause they were pretty, not because they knew what they were doing. He didn't last the weekend, tho.
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 12
    Meet_the_Meat He was a first day blackjack dealer. He took in $5 cash and exchanged it for a $500 chip. The lady stared at him for a good 20 seconds, picked up her chip and left the building. Gaming took his badge shortly after.
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 13
    Laeryl Worked in a chemical plant as QC (to make it short I was one of the chemists who check if the products were good enough to leave the plant). A guy working in production came for his first day, he took his break and he light a cigarette next to a 10.000 liters acetone tank. He was out before I could even blink an eye.
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 14
    Famousguy11 Our town's his spoiled mayor forced son to get a job at a restaurant where I worked. On his first day of training as a host, the kid sat in the waiting area looking at his phone instead of standing behind the host's stand greeting customers. The trainer tried to sort him out a couple of times, but he'd just greet one customer, walk them to their table, then go right back to sitting. The manager came to talk to him. Then the kid sighs, says, "I can't do this," and heads for the exit.
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 15
    tuckedfexas Kid lied about his experience as a "foreman" and drove a skid into the side of the house we were working on. Forks straight into the siding it was hilarious lol
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 16
    Wenlocke The afternoon of his first day as a developer, he was noticed downloading the source code of our main product app from the source control system to a personal usb stick. Said he wanted to "take it home and mess with it in his spare time" Edit: After Some Questions, some clarification. 1. This was after he'd signed the IT security policy to say he wouldn't (and they made sure people read it).
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 17
    2. This was also in the mid teens, in a company that really didn't like wfh. (our nearest solution was RDP gateway into an on- prem physical desktop, and that was mostly an "extreme weather" option. the chief exec HATED the concept of people not being in the office.) 3. They were a small-scale developer (organic growth from a two-man company over about 10 years) that suddenly had to ramp-up to a much larger set of developers (partly to update the tech stack) and was hiring fast and starting fast
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 18
    4. I don't work there any more (average 20% below market rate pay really bites.) NancokALT I want to believe the poor guy truly didn't understand why what he did was so bad. But then again, someone who cannot grasp that should not be handling professional software.
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 19
    dirge-kismet On my first day at Target another new hire jokingly jumped into the cardboard compactor and the boss sent him packing instantly. It wasn't on or anything, they just have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to jackassery. We'd been on the job for less than an hour so he made something like $6 total while working for Target.
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 20
    Raikariaa You know deli counters at supermarkets, the machines used to slice the meats? Someone got a job on said counter... and refused to use the slicer.
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 21
    UnderToe11 ɔuayɔ ayu Pushed the emergency stop red button when there were signs everywhere saying do not push unless emergency. Corporate needs to perform an investigation before work could resume. kkeut dude didn't even want the job, just wanted the glory of pushing the button
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 22
    Suitmonster Mortgage company, 2017, a manager hired in from outside (not an internal promote,) meets his team, I am on it, probably only 4-5 people at that time but one of them is a very well put together lady. She is younger than me, and I am younger than the manager guy was. She was super sweet and in no way interested in any office romance, let alone a guy probably twice her age. Literally at the first meeting, right after she introduced
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 23
    herself and said her name, he responded with "wow, you're a looker, we should smash. You'd like it." And then he 100% gave the rest of us a Michael Scott look, realizes what he has said is awful, but we just have to marinate in the silence that followed. The victim left the room, quietly, told the district manager in the next room over what happened, and the new guy was fired immediately after his welcome.
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 24
    for_dishonor She openly bragged to a manager she was amazed she passed the drug test... They even gave her the "Yeah, I didn't hear that" line. She repeated herself louder.
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 25
    southshieldtravis I was working at a large scale architectural firm in the Bay Area in 2004 and they hired a new guy and after his orientation and paper work he finally gets to his cubicle. The first thing he does is puts on his headphones and blasts death metal (Cannibal Corpse) so loud that everyone can hear and that's him using headphones. However that was not got him fired. His first work item was to write a company wide email that said Debbie Harry of Blondie was responsible for 9/11 and wr
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 26
    Minimum-Signature500 I was a bartender & it was his first day of training. He smacked my a○ when I was bent over to get ice. I flipped out on him & he got fired in front of me.
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 27
    CoderJoe1 I fired a man on the first day for incompetence. I work in IT. He claimed to have years of experience, but even after I showed him how to edit a text file in Notepad, he couldn't do it.
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 28
    uplifted_dragon Warehouse job right out of high school. Guy started hitting on the young lady that was our supervisor, and when she let him know that wouldn't fly, he started in with the st, misogynistic BS about how she couldn't possibly be good enough to be a supervisor of men (among a LOT of other He was gone before lunch. ..).
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 29
    Bgrngod My first day was also the first day for another dude, who showed up an hour and a half late. After being there for about 15 minutes and sort of starting helping me do the very first task we were assigned, he gets pulled into an office and fired. On his way out, he is walking past where I'm still working and he says "They fired me for being late. I can't believe it. Do you think you can give me a ride?"
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 30
    I laughed out loud and sheepishly said "Sorry dude. I'm kinda working right now." He thanked me anyways and walked out the building. He accidentally did me a big favor because so many of my new coworkers saw that interaction, and thought it was so incredibly hilarious, they all became immediately friendly with me to talk about it.
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 31
    Cogito Fired an employee on their first day when I asked them to turn on their camera for a call ... and it wasn't the person I interviewed.
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 32
    davethemacguy Graphic designer. Didn't know how to use a mouse. Edit: Since this comment got a ridiculous amount of traffic, let me explain it a bit. She was an older lady that had done graphic design back in the 70s/80s when it was mainly analog, and she was just getting back into the workforce after her kids had moved out, not realizing that 100% of the work was now digital. Nice person, everyone was sad that she had to be let go. I was a contractor for this company, not directly employed, and
    via u/Isabelle_K
  • 33
    graesen I worked in audio visual for large corporate events a long time ago. We had a helper from another location help on a big conference. He criticized everything from the moment he walked in. After his shift, our boss chewed him out. He cried on his way out the door. Then he forgot his car keys and had to come back in. He wasn't fired... But he never came back to our location to help again.
    via u/Isabelle_K

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