'Guy told me he couldn't really move fast because his motorcycle boots were too heavy': 20+ Employees who got fired for surprisingly funny reasons

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Oct 23, 2024 11:00 AM EDT

No one wants to get booted from their job unexpectedly, but these people had some pretty embarrassing reasons for losing their jobs! 

Have you ever had one of those friends who will tell you the wildest story you've ever heard, and then expect you to take their side even though they're clearly wrong? A lot of these people are just like that, displaying the most unhinged behaviors at work, and then expecting their bosses and coworkers to side with them. I know those HR PowerPoint sessions about what to do and not do in the workplace can be a snooze fest, but it helps to pay attention just a little bit! That said, there's no amount of HR training that can make a person do the dumbest things in the workplace, like the dudes who decided to pull a high-speed car trick on work property. Did they think the boss was going to come outside and applaud as they zoomed around doing a hilariously unsafe trick? Sometimes you just don't think things through, as the people replying to u/7oh3's question can share. 

Up next, read about the clever college student who got ghosted by their group project peers and decided to present their whole project alone just for the fun of it.

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  • 01
    Cheezburger Image 10418908928
    via Getty Images for Unsplash+

    This image is for illustration only, and the subjects are models; the image does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • 02
    What's the funniest thing you've seen someone get fired for?
    via u/7oh3
  • 03
    [deleted] Guy told me he couldn't really move fast (line cook) because his motorcycle boots were too heavy to walk in.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 04
    GreenBreasted... A girl called in sick. So the boss asks for a doctors note. The girl gives a doctors note. Turns out the girl just got one from google. images or something like that, with an address from New York. We worked in Texas.
    via u/GreenBreastedMango
  • 05
    allenidaho I got "fired" from a job at Arbys when I was a teenager WHILE I was quitting. I had worked there about a week and decided it really sucked . So I went into the Manager's office before my next shift to quit. I started with "Hi. Can we talk? I don't think this job is for me..."
    via u/allenidaho
  • 06
    I don't know if this Manager was already having a bad day, but she suddenly got 1. Her face turned a bit red and she snapped "Turn in your shirt and I.D. Badge! Just get out of here! You're fired!" So I walked out of her office, a bit stunned. Turned my stuff in at the admin building for the company that ran the chain. All in all, a pretty weird experience.
    via u/allenidaho
  • 07
    khegiobridge Cooked next door to another restaurant. Knew the day cook; he was ... unstable. So, lunch rush, a customer sends a steak back; not done enough. Sends it back again: too done. Customer gets a new steak, and sends it back again. The cook grabs the steak off the plate
    via u/khegiobridge
  • 08
    and throws it across the crowded restaurant and hits the customer sitting, so help me, 40 feet away, in the head. Yep, he got fired.
    via u/khegiobridge
  • 09
    LordFarquadOn... One girl who I work with when I was a life guard. Got fired for taking the portable defibrillator into a pool.
    via u/LordFarquadOnAQuad
  • 10
    [deleted] I didn't see it, but heard about it. The manager of this store where my friend used to work at was fired for forgetting to turn in bank deposits. He had several days worth of deposits in his car. He put them in his car and forgot about them.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 11
    GeekPunk00 Wasn't that funny but more unbelievable. When I worked at a Grocery Store for my first job, we had an employee get fired for stealing around $14,000 worth of groceries, don't know if they ever pressed charges though. He worked the closing shift so he would stash what he wanted in the back where there weren't cameras, bring it up in a box
    via u/GeekPunk00
  • 12
    when we closed, act like he paid for it earlier even brandishing a receipt (He would only pay for two or three of the items then walk out with the rest later). This continued for a long time until they installed new security cameras. I still can't believe he got away with it for so long.
    via u/GeekPunk00
  • 13
    [deleted] Used to give a guy a ride to work in the morning and sometimes, when I went to pick him up, he'd still be drinking from the night before. One day, he passed out in my car and I couldn't wake him when we got there so I went in and told one of
    via u/[deleted]
  • 14
    the other guys that I thought was his friend. Nope. That guy went straight to the boss. The boss woke him and took him home and fired him on the way.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 15
    rockystaircase At my very first job, I worked in a very very old fast food place. We had an auditor come in, and I was doing portion preps when the auditor walked by, and a piece of the ceiling fell into my food tray. Manager got canned after that.
    via u/rockystaircase
  • 16
    SarcasticGirl27 I had a co-worker who would be on her phone planning her weekends like none of us could hear her. It would include her not coming into the office on Friday. She wouldn't request the day off...she would call out...almost every week. Our manager didn't sit near by so she didn't hear this, but since we all had to pick up her slack when she wasn't
    via u/SarcasticGirl27
  • 17
    in, her constant calling out I us off. After all of our complaints, our manager noticed the pattern & finally told her that she couldn't take PTO until she had earned it. First week of the new year, she called out on a Friday. The next Monday, HR was waiting for her when she came in. They had a meeting & she was escorted from the building.
    via u/SarcasticGirl27
  • 18
    workswiththetu... When I was 16 or so I had a job stacking shelves in a supermarket. There was a phantom person stealing chocolate yogurts (always empty tubs in the bins in the changing rooms, tills didn't add up etc). Some bloke about 30 came back to the shop floor after a toilet
    via u/workswiththeturtle
  • 19
    break with chocolate mousse on the tip of his nose... turned out he forgot. to bring a spoon that day and after licking out the pot didn't wipe his face. After admitting it he was fired on the spot.
    via u/workswiththeturtle
  • 20
    [deleted] I used to fire a lot of people. Here are some of my favorites, in no particular order: Ship's Mast Two 18 year old kids decided to play Ship's Mast in the company parking lot. during the a 15 minute break.
    via u/workswiththeturtle

    Okay, here's what a Ship's Mast is, according to Urban Dictionary. The participants tie belts on the passenger side and driver's side of the car. Then, one person drives, while a passenger climbs out onto the front of the car! This person holds the belts on both sides to strap themselves to the front of this speeding vehicle. So the driver can barely see, and the passenger is emulating a bug flown onto a windshield. What could go wrong?

  • 21
    There were about 200 people in the parking lot, on top of security cameras. The kids were zipping through a 5MPH posted parking lot at ~45 MPH. Playing Ship's Mast. They were genuinely surprised when I fired them an hour later.
    via u/workswiththeturtle
  • 22
    Lunch Thief After several days of various employees reporting lunch theft, I tasked our security team with the horribly boring duty of monitoring the camera pointing at the lunch fridges. At the end of the day they provided me with footage, footage of the thief in action. This dude wasn't just stealing lunches, this dude
    via u/workswiththeturtle
  • 23
    was stealing every various lunches to make his own. He would wait for the shift to start, sneak off to the bathroom, dip into the break room, and raid the fridges. He would spend 10-15 minutes picking through various lunchbags, finding the things he wanted, and then he went outside to eat (all while on the clock).
    via u/workswiththeturtle
  • 24
    The day I fired him, I went outside for a smoke and saw him sitting at the end of the building eating stolen lunches (while still on the clock). I walk over to him and make chit-chat, knowing full well who he is and that I'm going to be firing him in less than an hour. He says to me, "Hey, did they ever catch that guy who was stealing lunches?
    via u/workswiththeturtle
  • 25
    That is pretty someone stole my lunch. too." sociopath. It felt good to fire that piece of I up,
    via u/workswiththeturtle
  • 26
    Fired for Pooping One of my area leaders came to me with a complaint about one of her team members who was taking longer and longer bathroom breaks each day. Once again, I tasked the security team to keep the camera aimed at the bathroom entrance so we could clock his coming / going. The first day was 25
    via u/workswiththeturtle
  • 27
    minutes, the second day was 37, and the third day was 75 minutes. Turns out the guy had been stealing cans of compressed air from the supply closet and was spending his work- day in the bathroom huffing them in a stall. After an hour of knocking, I had to kick the door in to find him blue-in- the-face and passed out near-dead on the toilet.
    via u/workswiththeturtle
  • 28
    EMS resuscitated him just in time for me to fire his He tried to sue us for firing him for pooping.
    via u/workswiththeturtle
  • 29
    [deleted] I used to work at a call centre with a guys (lets call him Kevin) that was around 35-40 years old and was of the awkward type, you know, constantly telling you a boring story about his week- end (the kind you can read on r/thatHappened), or just trying to attract attention to make some new friends without it being really effective.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 30
    When you work in a call centre there are some time in the evening when you don't receive a single call for a while so you don't have anything else to do but talk, reddit, or annoy your neighbours. Kevin and colleague (lets call her Josy) were usually around and joking back and forth. One night, Josy retorts to something Kevin says with "Bite me". So Kevin does. Josy, totally
    via u/[deleted]
  • 31
    shocked that he did, but being pretty about cool didn't say anything to anyone about it. HOWEVER, Kevin the next day brags to our supervisor about how he bit Josy. So, Supervisor asks Josy about it, gets confirmation and gets HR proceeds to nuke. Kevin's out.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 32
    nucumber well, this guy was a big fan of movie and tv stars from the 1950s and 1960s - he would watch old black and white tv shows on his lunch breaks. he was working a clerical job. at a hospital near hollywood so he had access to patient information. patient privacy is extremely confidential.
    via u/nucumber
  • 33
    you do NOT access a patients file unless you have a business related need to do so. there were meetings about this, emails about this, it was said loud and clear that you will get fired if you do this
    via u/nucumber
  • 34
    he did it. he had looked up several stars. he didn't do anything with the info, but still. they asked him if he knew the policies and he said yes but he couldn't help himself. whatever, he was gone that day
    via u/nucumber
  • 35
    ThatGuyPhillip A classmate of mine, who worked at a popular fast food chain, was fired for dropping his own burger that he bought during lunch break.
    via u/ThatGuyPhillip
  • 36
    mythicalmystic Someone once submitted an application where I work that said they were fired from their last job for "throwing a box at someone" with no other explanation.
    via u/mythicalmystic
  • 37
    IronicDespair One of my friends got fired for squirting vinegar into a coworkers eye
    via u/IronicDespair
  • 38
    N... oh, I have one... I worked for a very large internet failure in around 2000. Things were starting to go to within the company, but it was at that stage where no one (except execs) was really sure what was happening, things just felt off. We had this one guy, fresh
    via u/NedTaggart
  • 39
    out of college doing everything he could to fast track his way up the executive ladder. He was a complete -bag too. I am talking stereo typical -bag. If the part was going to be written for a movie, it would be this guy, probably played by Jeremy Piven if Jeremy Piven was about 5'3" and had hair like Gilderoy Lockehart. Yeah, he was short too very short. He was always the loudest in
    via u/NedTaggart
  • 40
    the room, the guy that was WAAAAY too serious about throwing elbows and calling fouls at the daily lunchtime. pickup basketball game. We are talking a Nimitz-class canoe here. Anyway, this guy got under EVERYONE'S skin. He made the mistake of burning a few bridges with the infrastructure team. Now to be clear, the infrastructure team was badass...Great
    via u/NedTaggart
  • 41
    group of guys. They were all ex-Airforce and had essentially been hired on as a group. One guy got hired as the lead slot and put together his team from men and women he served with. Top notch group of people. Well, unbeknownst to everyone, apparently gave his 2 week notice. Part of this process was letting leadership know, and this included the
    via u/NedTaggart
  • 42
    infrastructure team, so they could start winding down access, collecting equipment, etc. Edit: For clarification, the resignation was confidential. So, when had a week left he sent out this long email to the entire company. He proceeded to praise the exec team and completely excoriate everyone in the IT
    via u/NedTaggart
  • 43
    section, saying we were all unprofessional and that the state of the company could be laid at our feet. Lets not lose sight of the fact that this was a large dot com in 2000, the IT team was not insignificant. This email went out and we all read it. I honestly thought it was a mistake, I mean, he was junior level at best and had no real reason to even complain about anyone, not
    via u/NedTaggart
  • 44
    directly anyway, this just isn't how it was done. The head of the infrastructure saw this and hit a reply all to that email and said simply "Hey, little guy, why even bother, you handed in your resignation last week." You could head a collective "ooooooohhhh" on the floor when it hit everyone inbox.
    via u/NedTaggart
  • 45
    15 minutes later, there was a recall notice from the head of infrastructure. 45 minuter later we received a company wide email that the head of infrastructure was no longer with the company. 30 minutes after that we emails started filtering in from the rest of infrastructure they they were all resigning.
    via u/NedTaggart
  • 46
    edit2: The little apparently made a big stink over this. I do not exactly have the details, but rumor had it he went to HR and threatened legal action since his resignation had been publicly outed. By the end of the day, there was no one left over there. Not a single person. That was the beginning of the end. It was glorious to watch. It took me about 2
    via u/NedTaggart
  • 47
    weeks, but I, along with many other found another job and GTFO.
    via u/NedTaggart
  • 48
    ratboi876 A kid I'm in high school with got fired from Kroger's for putting his mix tapes in with people's groceries
    via u/ratboi876
  • 49
    Babyrabievaccine I was fired because my boyfriend at the time hugged me on shift. I was walking to the break room, down the employee hall and he was leaving it and he sort of hugged me. I pushed him away and told him not to do
    via u/Babyrabievaccine
  • 50
    that at work. I was later fired, citing it as inappropriate workplace behavior. He was not fired and worked there for several more years.
    via u/Babyrabievaccine
  • 51
    CassandraVindi... I knew a dude who was working at Microsoft. They have a very nice "company store" where you can buy their products at a huge discount. This was around the time when the XBox first came out. He was buying all the MS XBox games at the company store and returning them to various retail stores to get a non-MS game.
    via u/CassandraVindicated
  • 52
    His goal was to get every game made for the XBox and he wasn't quiet about it. It got to the point where stores would no longer accept his returns. Someone finally had enough and was sick of the abuse and hearing about it. As soon as the managers found out, he was sacked. On Christmas Eve. Everyone clapped when he was escorted out. I still laugh thinking about him telling his wife about losing
    via u/CassandraVindicated
  • 53
    a dream job because he wanted to game the system. He had kids too.
    via u/CassandraVindicated
  • 54
    BrosesMalone Not fired, but I've seen someone get expelled for in a plant pot during class
    via u/BrosesMalone
  • 55
    Anthillmob74 I was fired for jokingly saying I could arrange for someone on Twitter to in my boss's handbag. I won at appeal after being sacked but got demoted.
    via u/Anthillmob74
  • 56
    [deleted] One employee got fired for bringing her 2 large jugs to work and refilling them just at quitting time with spring water from the office spring water dispenser/cooler. She did it every day just before leaving for home and used the water in her private time at the employer's expense.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 57
    Hebrewsuperman I got fired from an ice cream parlor in high school, let's call it "Freeze Rock Creamery", because I made up my own sigunature ice cream treat and got the regulars to order it instead of the ones the company made up. I called it "That Good Cream" and my boss
    via u/Hebrewsuperman
  • 58
    got | after about 3 weeks of people coming up and asking the staff for "that good cream". It's butterpecon ice cream, cookie dough and brownie. Delicious.
    via u/Hebrewsuperman
  • 59
    Amlav270 This will get buried, but working at a supermarket when I was 16, one of my co-workers was caught eating pringles in the aisle when they should have been re-stocking the shelves. The boss walked over and said "what are you doing?" and they replied "once you pop you can't stop" shrugged and walked out. FIRED
    via u/Amlav270
  • 60
    richardec I worked at a deli where they fired a guy for always sticking his fingers inside the sausage stuffer. They fired her too.
    via u/richardec
  • 61
    MedschoolgirlM... Worked in a call center before, overheard this convo that got a couple fired. GF: Tell her baby, tell her I'm better than her. I can F you so much better. BF:Yes, baby. ExGF is crying uncontrollably in her cubicle
    via u/MedschoolgirlMadison
  • 62
    turned out he cheated on her for months with this girl. Ex reported the incident to HR. Sad thing is BF just got promoted to managerial position that week and got fired.
    via u/MedschoolgirlMadison
  • 63
    r... I worked at a portable toilet company, and a guy over filled a tanker we used to store tell it was hauled off. When he reversed the truck to pump into the tanker it shot fifty feet in the air, and covered everything with • . They had him clean it up and then fired him when he was done.
    via u/rlockrem32

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