‘They would clock in and then go home’: HR managers share the wildest reasons why they had to fire an employee

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Bar Mor Hazut • Senior Editor
Jun 16, 2024 12:00 PM EDT

Working in HR must be a challenging experience, as they have to deal with a lot of office drama, both from the managers and the employees. But with all that drama, there must be hilarious moments and stories that those HR people will remember for their entire careers. Plus, having the opportunity to fire someone when they actually deserve it, can actually be an extremely interesting and yes, even funny, experience.

This is what brought on the topic of this AskReddit prompt, in which HR workers have been asked to share the wildest reasons why they had to fire an employee, and some of those reasons made it here, as we had to share these bizarre stories. From buying cars on the company's credit card to causing a group fight between a number of employees, the people of HR did not disappoint with their stories.

Scroll down to read the wildest stories we could find. After you are done, click here for a story of an entitled coworker who caused an office dispute when she wasn't invited to a birthday party.

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  • 01
    IN OUT IN MONDAY - Reg. Time - Overtime IN Time Dbl. Time TUESDAY WEDN L DEDUCTIONS Hrs. Hrs. . 3.0 Hrs. G "They would clock in, go home, and then come back 8 hours later to clock out"
    via Canva
  • 02
    People who work in HR, what's the wildest thing you've discovered that led to a firing in the course of your career?
    via u/HighElfEsteem
  • 03
    stitch714 - 7 hr. ago We had an employee who would clock in at the time clock everyday and then go home. They'd come back to clock out for lunch and back in after an hour. Then come back at the end of the day. It was impressive how long it took a manager to catch on.
    via u/stitch714
  • 04
    tizod 9 hr. ago Long time ago I was an IT contractor working for a large company. There was probably about 20 of us on this one team that were all contracted by an IT staffing firm.
    via u/tizod
  • 05
    It came to light that one of my colleagues had been previously fired as a high school teacher for a som where he would go to his students place of employment (Target, Best Buy etc) and steal a bunch of in exchange for giving them good grades.
    via u/tizod
  • 06
    • AnimusFlux 7 hr. ago So, I used to work at a software company and we kept getting complaints about a nap room being cluttered and trash from the nearby breakroom being left around in the mornings, so we asked security to
    via u/AnimusFlux
  • 07
    do some late evening walk-bys to see what was going on. One evening, they found a young Asian woman hiding in the nap room. She didn't work there and she didn't speak English. It was super weird.
    via u/AnimusFlux
  • 08
    It turns out, one of the software engineers who worked in the building had purchased a mail- order bride. But here's the kicker - he was already married. So, unable to bring his new mail-order bride home, he kept her at the office. No
    via u/AnimusFlux
  • 09
    idea where she hid during the day, but at night she made good use of our little nap room. Gotta feel bad for that poor woman.
    via u/AnimusFlux
  • 10
    FleetAdmiralCrunch 7 hr. ago My experience I have seen a lot of wild stuff, but people in HR were the wildest. HR generalist was pregnant. The father was one of the people on the production floor, but she didn't know which one. Fist fights broke out among all the potential fathers.
    via u/FleetAdmiralCrunch
  • 11
    HR VP was fired after a paid conference he attended was actually just a free vacation for him and his family, and he didn't even go to the same city as the conference
    via u/FleetAdmiralCrunch
  • 12
    HR director was having an affair with IT director, both married. When they were confronted, they both denied it, so they were both fired. I saw them 7 years later on a plane coming back from Europe. Still together.
    via u/FleetAdmiralCrunch
  • 13
    Pancovnik 8 hr. ago • One of the salespeople has printed their new offer of employment from a direct competitor from a company laptop, on a company printer and forgot it there. She was not the sharpest tool in the shed.
    via u/Pancovnik
  • 14
    All of her stuff got immediately locked and she had also tried to download the whole client database and sent it as attachment from her work email to her private one. All this happened in one day.
    via u/Pancovnik
  • 15
    Caspers_Shadow . 7 hr. ago Not HR, but my coworker went to work for a competitor and never quit her job with us. She traveled for work and was able to work both jobs for months. Lasted until a customer mentioned he heard she left our company and asked who his account rep would be.
    via u/Caspers_Shadow
  • 16
    jordan-lakers9394 - 9 hr. ago This dude used to work two other remote jobs from his cubicle and he also has an Etsy business. True entrepreneur, he was.
    via u/jordan-lakers9394
  • 17
    CaliBelgique 8 hr. ago Not in HR, but there was a story at my company that a guy bought a car on the company card & obviously got fired. Seriously, how do you think you're gonna get away with that...
    via u/CaliBelgique
  • 18
    106 40ozTOFreedom · 7 hr. ago • I heard a story of a guy using an unmarked company car to run Uber eats and door dash all day. He got away with it for a couple years. He finally got caught because he was using his work phone for Uber
    via u/40ozTOFreedom
  • 19
    and his data was astronomically higher than anyone else in the company. If he had just used his personal phone, he probably could still be going.
    via u/40ozTOFreedom
  • 20
    Timbo2702 6 hr. ago Dude requested a letter from HR to provide his insurance company, to state that he was on-shift on a particular day at a particular time - and therefore could not have been the one driving when his car was involved in an accident.
    via u/Timbo2702
  • 21
    For similar letters in the past, we provide 1) Their roster for the day, 2) Confirmation of their clock in and out times and 3) Their scan in and out times of their security ID. (To show someone was rostered on, clocked in and didn't leave the building before clocking out)
    via u/Timbo2702
  • 22
    Turns out this guy hadn't actually worked that day - and when he realized we would actually check before putting it in writing, tried to use his supervisor level access to alter historical records to say that he was on shift. He got caught out because the system wouldn't let you alter your own roster.
    via u/Timbo2702
  • 23
    When the inevitable "No, we will not help you commit insurance fraud - turn in your ID" conversations happened and all facts presented to him, it was the only time I've heard a union rep say words to the effect of entirely siding with HR in a dismissal
    via u/Timbo2702
  • 24
    JU AidynValo 7 hr. ago Car dealership. Co-owner of the company had a used car lot he had registered under a friend's name. The big dealership would take in used cars, he'd pay a technician off-the-books
    via u/AidynValo
  • 25
    to give it a bad inspection so the car would go to auction. He'd use the other company to purchase the cars for dirt cheap and sell the cars at a huge profit margin. Essentially got our KBB rep fired because she was evaluating trade-ins as being in good condition, but the inspections
    via u/AidynValo
  • 26
    would all come back bad, so in the company's eyes, she was terrible at her job and paying people way too much for their trade-ins. They started to catch on when they realized close to 40% of all the trade-ins were getting poor inspections. So they implemented a
    via u/AidynValo
  • 27
    system where two technicians each did their own inspections. Suddenly, not so many cars were getting poor inspections. Then it all unraveled when they looked into it deeper and realized every single bad inspection came from one
    via u/AidynValo
  • 28
    technician. In total, they estimated roughly $400k in profit had been stolen from the company over the past couple years. It was pretty messy.
    via u/AidynValo

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