'Instead of quitting...people started eating donuts in front of management and being fired on the spot': 20+ Ultra petty reasons people got fired from their jobs

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Sep 10, 2024 11:00 AM EDT

Management doesn't always make the best decisions for their team. Sometimes they make incredibly bad decisions, and their team is left with their mouths hanging open, wondering how such a bad choice could possibly happen. 

There are some bosses who will fire their top employee over a minor rule break, leaving the team scrambling. Others impose some absolutely ridiculous rules (see the donut story at #49!). That boss fired one person for the heinous crime of… eating a few M&Ms from the bakery area. Heaven forbid! They then fired another dude for the equally despicable faux pas of eating a glazed donut without paying for it. It's like these bosses don't realize that that person could be an otherwise really great employee. They'll save pennies by stopping more donut theft, but they'll spend much more money by having to hire and train a whole new employee. These bosses just weren't thinking ahead… and they were acting on their pettiest instincts, and you can read all about it in this r/AskReddit thread down below.

Next up, read about some outrageous HOA rules that'll make you roll your eyes, like one that decided "They want a $10 fee for overnight guests." 

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  • 01
    'I was fired because I was "bringing the morale of the team down by taking 1.5 hour lunches"
    via No Revisions on Unsplash
  • 02
    What is the Pettiest Thing You've Seen Someone Fired For?
    via u/CruiseWeld
  • 03
    starhussy My husband was asked to do an interview to go from temp to full time. A couple of his co-workers got jealous. They trashed his equipment while he was on break. The whole thing was caught on camera, but they still fired him for "not being a team player."
    via u/starhussy
  • 04
    Extrasherman I used to work at a Chili's restaurant and we used to have to roll silverware after each shift. 50 silverware rolled in napkins. No one liked to do it. Well one day all of the servers got called into the dry storage area. The manager had found a tray of silverware that someone had hidden so we wouldn't have to roll any. I
    via u/Extrasherman
  • 05
    forget what the ultimatum was but the manager was going to take it out on all of us if someone didn't confess. Finally one guy stepped forward. I still don't think he did it but he took the blame and was promptly fired.
    via u/Extrasherman
  • 06
    LGMHorus Oh, I have another one, this was a buddy of mine. Incredibly talented software developer, but a bit of a joker. My boss, who was way too serious, did not like him too much because of that. So, we have been asking for a few months for a code repository, because we had to work with shared folders and, as any developer will tell you, that is an absolutely
    via u/LGMHorus
  • 07
    garbage idea. Before a particular part of the project, this buddy of mine took him upon himself to create and configure the repository on a machine that we used for backup. It took him about an hour, which was on his lunch time, not on company time, and from then on, we had a proper development environment with SVN.
    via u/LGMHorus
  • 08
    He was fired for insubordination. For doing. something beneficial to the company and crucial to the project. On his own time.
    via u/LGMHorus
  • 09
    ffxivthrowaway03 Two girls on the very low end of the totem pole. Like "not even making a living. wage" servicing positions. One is a spiteful who barely does her job and takes too many days off, we'll call her Tiffany. One is a really sweet hard worker, we'll call her Mary.
    via u/ffxivthrowaway03
  • 10
    Tiffany and her best friend co-worker Stefanie are constantly talking about Mary, causing drama that keeps trickling up to middle management. One day, Mary is in the bathroom in a stall and overhears the other two talking about her behind her back again. She ends up in her managers office in tears, it goes up the ladder to the owners.
    via u/ffxivthrowaway03
  • 11
    The owners decide that this needs to stop, and the best way to do that... They fire Mary.
    via u/ffxivthrowaway03
  • 12
    casualLogic Working in the known as a "call center" in West Mifflin, PA: Saw one woman working, not feeling well, had no time left, so couldn't call off. Within a few hours, she had used up all of her allotted 'break time" (15 minutes), and her supervisor wouldn't permit her to leave the floor for the bathroom
    via u/casualLogic
  • 13
    again, so she threw up - all over her computer. She was fired for "Destruction of Company Property." TRUE STORY.
    via u/casualLogic
  • 14
    [deleted] I actually was fired yesterday from my pizzeria after 5 years because I asked for two days off for a family event, and a surprise day with my girlfriend (obviously just said family event). I came back every summer from school and they would ask me if i could come back and help, I always did because I love the customers.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 15
    After I was told no, I ended up trying to switch with someone else, like we normally would do. My boss. found out, didnt like it, and fired me after 5 years. Kinda dumbfounded to be honest.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 16
    XI... Guy got fired bc he finally got his degree in engineering and wanted more responsibility (and pay). Managers threw him in a role purposely built for him. to fail without support and training. They gave him neither. Fired Him when
    via u/XIGRIMxREAPERIX
  • 17
    spiraled out of control. Caused a rift between the team and management. Over half of the team left within a year (Including Me).
    via u/XIGRIMxREAPERIX
  • 18
    Jedi_Gill I work in IT; and I had a contract job that was going to end on Friday.. on Thursday evening I decided to clean up my computer profile.. Transfer relevant documents to our network share, and use CCLEANER to wipe my internet/cookies etc.. history.. standard protocol.. I pretty much just wanted my pc fresh for the new guy.. Boss walked in the
    via u/Jedi_Gill
  • 19
    room when I walked away for a bathroom break.. when I returned to my desk..the laptop was gone. I was told to see the boss about it. He accused me of deleting company data and wiping my computer. He wasn't very tech savy.. I explained to him what I was actually doing and even showed him the important docs on the shared drive which he cared about. He
    via u/Jedi_Gill
  • 20
    didn't apologize but still insisted he didn't trust me anymore and that I should leave. I happily left smiling, because the next day Friday I knew i was supposed to train the new guy on becoming the new Service Now Administrator.. My boss forgot this while we discussed and they ended up getting screwed since no knowledge transfer was ever made possible.
    via u/Jedi_Gill
  • 21
    I heard they paid alot of money for someone else to come in, and basically figure out what I had done; to be fair they offered me a good amount of money to come back for 2 days of re- training but I told them No as I already had another job lined up that following monday. I hope this story qualifies for this topic; but I thought I'd share it.
    via u/Jedi_Gill
  • 22
    LGMHorus I was fired because I was "bringing the moral of the team down by taking 1.5 hour lunches every day". OK, except that: • I was taking longer lunches to take my son to a medical treatment he was going through at the time.
    via u/LGMHorus
  • 23
    • That was well agreed with my boss beforehand. • I was coming in an hour earlier every day to compensate, as agreed. However, I'm glad to be honest. My boss was a huge with no leadership skills or a clear vision of the project.
    via u/LGMHorus
  • 24
    80sKidsAreSmarter I was fired from subway when I was 19. The dressings and sauces come in these big plastic bags, which you cut a small hole in and pour into the bottles. When you're done, you put the bag and it's remnants in the fridge for the next fill up. One day before my shift the owner brought me in the office and
    via u/80sKidsAreSmarter
  • 25
    him and his brother had three half full bags of dressing. They asked me if I threw them away, instead of putting them back in the fridge. I said no, he no clue. who it was tbh. They kept accusing me of it and said we could watch the tapes to find out so I said fine, watch the tapes. They had no
    via u/80sKidsAreSmarter
  • 26
    tapes. They kept persisting that I did it, and when I finally just said I don't know who it was, but my shift is starting, they said they needed to know if any more bags were thrown away because they were taking it out of my check.
    via u/80sKidsAreSmarter
  • 27
    I told them you're not doing that, they told me to leave my shirt and apron and I was being terminated. I went home and told my dad, who's first response was "they fished through the trash for these bags and are gonna serve it to the customers?" So he called them and threatened to contact the board of health, they apologized profusely, and I went the next day and got my last check.
    via u/80sKidsAreSmarter
  • 28
    I'm 90% sure in Massachusetts to terminate someone you have to hand them their final paycheck at the moment of termination. Either way, subway
    via u/80sKidsAreSmarter
  • 29
    WhoaMilkerson I was once fired from a job because I was asked to create this intake form on Microsoft Word and my boss claimed that I didn't do it. I was genuinely confused, and even though I was a million percent certain that I indeed sent it properly, I said "Maybe I forgot to attach the file?". Boss said we can't have that kind of forgetfulness here and told
    via u/WhoaMilkerson
  • 30
    me to go clean out my desk. As I'm cleaning things out, I open my e-mail, pull up the original sent e-mail that included the file he claimed I never sent, and forwarded the original e-mail and reattached the same file (I included the date in the filename too) to the boss. who just fired me. I forgot exactly what I wrote but it was something along the
    via u/WhoaMilkerson
  • 31
    lines of "Thank you for the opportunity. Here is the file you requested". As I'm cleaning out my desk, the Assistant Director who was so busy in his own work that he didn't notice I was being fired at that very moment, confusedly asks. "WhoaMilkerson, why did you send us the same file twice?"
    via u/WhoaMilkerson
  • 32
    I didn't know whether to facepalm or explode in a fit of rage.
    via u/WhoaMilkerson
  • 33
    Quinn_Dexter Happened to me in a internship: "You talked to my wife yesterday, she said you're cute. Get your stuff and off" Well, erm, ok, I'm 16 and your wife is like 50 ... but, more free time until sommer holidays end, not going to argue with you.
    via u/Quinn_Dexter
  • 34
    Dingo9933 I had worked as a leasing consultant for a very well know apartment rental company 12 years ago. My schedule start time changed daily/weekly and it was not uncommon to work 9 days in a row so it could be exhausting. The office switched to using a finger print punch in clock when you start your shift and if you missed it you had to fill
    via u/Dingo9933
  • 35
    out a time card sheet. So I missed a punch in one morning and filled out a sheet a few days later. I wrote my start time as 8:00 but it was really 9:00 so the assistant manager called me asking about it the day before we put in our time cards for pay and I said my mistake it was in fact 9 let me know if you need me to come into the office and correct it. she said no problem. 2 hours later she
    via u/Dingo9933
  • 36
    calls me again but sounds strange and asks why I wrote down 8:00 I said I was confused because the rest of the week had been 8:00 but again no problem if you need me to correct. I was told "" no that is fine"" turns out the manager was on the other line (who hated me) and they tried to get me to say something that would fire me. I did not however I was fired for trying to steal 1 hour of pay. After I got fired I
    via u/Dingo9933
  • 37
    filed for unemployment and actually got it because when the unemployment office called the manager to get her story she never returned the call. Jump to me at a new job 2 months later and I get a court notice that my old boss and company is taking me to unemployment insurance court because they want to dispute the 1 month I collected unemployment. So I go and they have a corporate
    via u/Dingo9933
  • 38
    lawyer, the HR person, The assistant Manager, and manager against me. We sit in front of a judge who hears our case and I provide my side of the story showing how much the start times change etc. They provide their side and the judge goes ""ok so the employee was fired for taking one extra hour of pay"" I interject and say your honor I never received the pay for
    via u/Dingo9933
  • 39
    that hour. He asks what do I mean I tell him the problem was caught before the time sheets went in. He rubs his face and says "" So why are we even here??"" My old II II boss says because he tried to steal an hour"". The judge goes I heard enough, you will get my judgment via letter this session is over.
    via u/Dingo9933
  • 40
    He ruled in my favor so I got to keep that one month of pay and the money they wasted on the lawyer, the HR women, and getting people to cover that property while the managers had to go to court probably cost more than the money they were fighting me for =D them haha
    via u/Dingo9933
  • 41
    [de... I got fired once for calling in sick. I called in to tell my boss that I was too sick to work so she had me calling around to find a replacement. No one answered but I was sick so I called her back and told her. She said ok. I show up the next day I had work and everything is fine, she doesn't say anything. Two weeks later we get the
    via u/[deleted]
  • 42
    schedule and I'm not on it. She's not in because she's on vacation so I ask her assistant. She has no idea and tells me to just wait for the manager to come back. Being a dumb 19 year old, I do. So another two weeks later I'm still not on schedule and she's back but avoiding. Like if I ask for her, "no one can find her". Finally she got sick of avoiding me a couple days later and gives me a
    via u/[deleted]
  • 43
    meeting with her and the store manager. I'm fired for no call, no show. I ask her what the she's talking about and she says I haven't shown up for a month of work. I tell the store manager that I wasn't scheduled and I could tell it threw him off a bit. But the manager keeps insisting I just didn't show and that I need to sign this paper saying I'm fired for not
    via u/[deleted]
  • 44
    showing. Ultimately I did because again dumb 19 year old. I found out later from a friend that worked in a different department she did this because that day I called in sick, she had to work on her day off. She me out of a job because she had to work on her day off as a manager.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 45
    arcsine Myself. I had worked there for a while, and finally the parent company started moving in and taking over. I was staunchly against the change, since I spent hundreds of hours rebuilding their IT infrastructure from scratch, only to have it ripped out and replaced with stuff I was untrained on.
    via u/arcsine
  • 46
    The actual infraction was pretty laughable. A boss was with some employees at a bar after work. Apparently she got in a fight with one of the employees, fired her, and confiscated her laptop. She gave it to the other employee and told him to use it to work from home the next day.
    via u/arcsine
  • 47
    Of course, that didn't work. He didn't even have rights. on the VPN. She called me in to her office to berate me because my technology didn't do what she thought it did. I was sick of kowtowing, and just straight up told her she can't reassign hardware without clearing it with me. I was her peer in the org
    via u/arcsine
  • 48
    chart, it wasn't insubordinance. Still, I got fired for not fixing a problem I didn't know existed.
    via u/arcsine
  • 49
    reli... In the 80's, I worked at a grocery called "Schnucks". Management was obsessed with shrink and became crazy with employees eating damages or anything in the bakery. Some guy was fired for eating a few M&Ms from the cookie area. Another was fired for eating an old glazed donut.
    via u/relish-tranya
  • 50
    Instead of quitting with notice to leave for college or whatever, people started eating donuts in front of management and being fired on the spot. Quitting became "Eating the Doughnut".
    via u/relish-tranya
  • 51
    watsee Had a friend who worked for a steel fabricators as an apprentice, however he had decided that he was better suited to a future in the Navy. He had been given a start date for basic training & around 2 months before, he had to hit the emergency stop button on his steel
    via u/watsee
  • 52
    press because it had loaded in the steel incorrectly. That's why the emergency stop button exists. Afterwards, he would have. to take some time out to reset the machine & record the incident.
    via u/watsee
  • 53
    Anyway, someone had blabbed to his management that he was leaving to go join the Navy a few months. later. So they sacked him for what they found was a disregard for personal safety because he had to stop his - machine.
    via u/watsee
  • 54
    fudgyvmp One of my dad's co-workers took a two week vacation, scheduled it all out, the company has people bid for their vacation based on seniority every November. So it's not like he just took off at random. When the co-worker didn't come back after the first week, his manager thought he was skipping work and
    via u/fudgyvmp
  • 55
    fired him after he didn't show up for five days in a row. He showed up when he was actually scheduled to work after his vacation was over, and the manager got a wrist slap and HR had a nightmare of paperwork to deal with reinstating the guy. Who went on to steal a truck load of computers several years later and get fired for real.
    via u/fudgyvmp
  • 56
    brewerintexas I don't know about petty - but this is funny. A guy I worked with applied for a new job, while on company time. A few minutes later he got an "out of office" reply from the person he sent his resume to it was our boss - - who was out of town but had posted a job opening to eventually replace the guy who was looking for a new job.
    via u/brewerintexas
  • 57
    crystalhorsess I worked at a bookstore that had a cafe in it. We all got free coffee in the beginning, then as the company started to fail they took that away and we had to pay like 45 cents and also for the milk in our coffee. The top brass came down hard one day and questioned everyone on if they paid for the milk in their
    via u/crystalhorsess
  • 58
    coffee. Everyone didn't but said they did, except one honest fellow. He was an exchange student from China and was the nicest kid you'd ever meet, worked really hard, and they fired him on the spot for stealing milk. It was over our bosses head and everyone was so upset.
    via u/crystalhorsess
  • 59
    RipThrotes My friend got his shifts covered add his sub didn't show one day and he got fired via text on vacation. He was unfired but lost all his shifts and is now a sub.
    via u/RipThrotes
  • 60
    big_blunder A very energetic dude on the service desk decided to show his manager how they get through night shift's... when the phone isn't ringing etc. He was fired the same day. Don't show your boss movies! Glad leadership never saw me playing Battlefield all night to keep my eyes open on night shift!
    via u/big_blunder

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