'[He] ignored instructions... and dropped a $250,000 machine': 20+ Workers who made huge blunders but weren't fired

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Oct 27, 2024 5:00 PM EDT

We all have that one coworker who seems like they can do no wrong in the boss's eyes. Maybe they're constantly napping, but the supervisor just cheerfully walks by without noticing. Or maybe they constantly leave work early without an excuse, but the boss couldn't care less. Or, if you're like some of the people who answered u/Virtual-Bunch-9131's query to r/AskReddit, maybe your coworker went to further extremes and still didn't get the boot!

It can be totally infuriating to work diligently at your 9-5, only to watch your coworker who definitely makes more money than you slack off. Every time you glance at them, they're scrolling Facebook or watching YouTube videos without headphones. They miss deadlines and never know what's going on… but still, the boss loves them, so they'll never fired. Ugh! Some people's coworkers did even worse things and still didn't get kicked out of their positions. It just goes to show how arbitrary things are in the workplace: if you're a nepo-hire or you're the boss's favorite person to goof off with, your job is safe forever. 

After that, these neighbors were worried that a 13-year-old snowboarder was going to break their fence or have an accident, so they impolitely demanded to "speak to the landowner." 

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  • 01
    Cheezburger Image 10420554752
    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 is the most fireable thing you have seen someone do at work that didn't get them fired?
    via u/Virtual-Bunch-9131
  • 03
    Yead1971 Accidentally send out the entire company's (3,000+ employees) headcount to the company distro. File contained everyone's salary, birthday, government numbers, etc.
    via u/Yead1971
  • 04
    EshoWarCry "What are you gonna do? Fire me? I'm your only line cook that'll take 3 waiters, a bus boy, and the dish washer with me if I leave!" | was the dish washer.
    via u/EshoWarCry
  • 05
    Brand_Ex2001 When I worked retail, I once challenged a customer to step outside and fight. The customer - I'll never forget this said, "Dude, you're at - work," and walked out, shaking his head. Sometimes the customer is right!
    via u/Brand_Ex2001
  • 06
    bluebirdgoogle tried his damndest to sleep with the bosses wife while out at a work party. got fired months later for something completely unrelated
    via u/bluebirdgoogle
  • 07
    GuySaysStuff Supervisor freaked the f out on the sales guy and just clocked out. It was a super busy shipping day and he was just done. He got to the end of the driveway and turned around and clocked back in and they just acted like he didn't tell them to lol
    via u/GuySaysStuff
  • 08
    OopsNiceTry Watched a coworker rent an entire big box retail store parking lot to a BMW dealership for cash on the side so they could park excess inventory. Corporate didn't know. He pocketed all the money.
    via u/OopsNiceTry
  • 09
    M... Had a guy at work do these things during his time at a place I worked and he never got fired: Accidentally set fire to the trees out back whilst taking a pee, he was bored and lighting ants on fire. Fire truck had to come put it out - scorched earth!
    via u/Mc00p
  • 10
    Ignored instructions from a spotter and dropped a 250k machine whilst the spotter was underneath (luckily, the legs on the machine prevented any injury). Edit: I was wrong, she wasn't underneath just very close and looking underneath. Threw a plastic 55g drum at the owner in a fit of drunken rage.
    via u/Mc00p
  • 11
    Routinely stole cash, beer, and merch. Threw a glass at me once, but that wasn't really all that bad. Pulled the wrong valve off of the bottom of a tank and lost 800 gallons of beer before I could get it back on for him
    via u/Mc00p
  • 12
    Some of the things from the top of my head, it was a while back now but he eventually quit.
    via u/Mc00p
  • 13
    Candersx In a hospital the person went out to get a patient and called out in the waiting room, "Where's my little (insert name of disease the infant had) baby?" Basically just told all the people in the room what disease the baby had and the mother's jaw dropped and was furious. Nothing happened. She ended up quitting on her own 3-4 years later.
    via u/Candersx
  • 14
    deceptivekhan Worked at a Video Game retailer, yeah that one, back when I was fresh out of college. The Nintendo Wii was due to be released the following week and we were no longer taking pre-orders. Some guy comes in with his girlfriend and wanted to preorder but couldn't so he tried to bribe my coworker with $20 to get one anyway.
    via u/deceptivekhan
  • 15
    Store was full of customers and our supervisor was present. Coworker busts out laughing, walks around the counter, puts an arm around the guys shoulder, literally busting a gut, wheezing with laughter. Suddenly he stops laughing, looks the guy d ad in the face and yells, "20 bucks?!?! GO !!" A
    via u/deceptivekhan
  • 16
    Guy's face turned bright red and his girlfriend and the entire store started laughing at him. Never saw the guy again. Manager said that was hilarious but don't ever do that again. Coworker was let go months later for gift card fraud shortly after I was promoted and transferred to another store.
    via u/deceptivekhan
  • 17
    Illiterarian Worked at a deli for a summer that hired a bunch of high school kids with a large sweaty checked out manager. I was one of the high school kids. One of the other two had a block of havarti cheese they just opened to cut off six slices for a old lady. It was near the end of the day so instead of
    via u/Illiterarian
  • 18
    putting the rest of the block of cheese in syran wrap and in the refrigerator he put it down the garbage disposal. Just pushed it down with barbeque tongs while doing the "shhhh" gesture at me with his lips and other index finger. I just thought "Well that's | up."
    via u/Illiterarian
  • 19
    mom_with_an_... Not do her job. Find any excuse to avoid work. Spend half the day chatting on the phone. Then work unapproved overtime, claiming that she had too much work and needed to catch up. Yes, I'm talking about you, Stephanie. Worst co-worker I ever had.
    via u/mom_with_an_attitude
  • 20
    crashsaturnlol A director of customer engagement publicly, in a department wide recorded meeting, told everyone he was going to participate in wage theft against his subordinates. I've never downloaded and saved a zoom meeting faster. Then, when he didn't get
    via u/crashsaturnlol
  • 21
    reprimanded or anything, I took that video to the labor board and sued them for wage theft. It just boggles my mind how a popular, well known start up would allow someone like that to remain on staff. Last I heard, half the call center was going after them for wage theft under the same condition that I did.
    via u/crashsaturnlol
  • 22
    chimney_sweep Literally not working. She would get to work at 6:30 and I would see her leaving as I pulled in at 8:00. Her boss hadn't even arrived yet. This was like 4-5 days per week. She maybe stayed till 2:00 on the good days.
    via u/chimney_sweep
  • 23
    They tried to fire her and were told it was impossible to fire anyone for anything at a university. They waited for the grant to run out and then didn't put her on the new one. It took 2 years.
    via u/chimney_sweep
  • 24
    sporks_and_forks in my life i had one job outside of being self- employed: head of the IT department for a local retailer with three in-state locations and two out-of- state locations. everything was going great. new websites built, new software for the employees to list items online built, new inventory system setup, marketing going well, etc.
    via u/sporks_and_forks
  • 25
    this was until nepotism kicked in. see, we were doing millions in ad buys on TV and low-and-behold the son of the lady we did these buys through needed a job. so he's hired and it was immediately clear this kid had no clue what he was doing. but he had some pull. he fancied himself a nerd so he started tinkering with our site. not a dev branch, i'm talking production. the live
    via u/sporks_and_forks
  • 26
    website. soon after we got hacked. it took me some time to find out how the shell got onto our server. turns out while making his unneeded changes, with various security settings on our site. this led directly to us getting owned. it was all in the logs. i documented what he did and the consequences of it. we had to take the website down so
    via u/sporks_and_forks
  • 27
    internet sales immediately stopped. i had to go through all of the source code to make sure there weren't any other backdoors lurking. it was a PITA. the kid never faced any consequences for this. i quit soon after and went back to self-employment. fun times!
    via u/sporks_and_forks
  • 28
    Visual-Boat-Hire Worked a 24 hour shift doing manual labour. Then got into a truck, drove 2 hrs to another site do another 8 hour shift. Coerced a few underlings to join him. Then they had to drive home... 34 hours of working without sleep, driving public roads in that state thinking they where tough as
    via u/Visual-Boat-Hire
  • 29
    The boss was an absolute scumbag, but even he had the sense to know that this was truly irresponsible. This was solely on the head of the narcissistic egomaniac foreman who thought he was the toughest bada around and only those who could follow him where the good workers. Needless to say I opted out. I wasn't on the foreman's good side and he made my
    via u/Visual-Boat-Hire
  • 30
    life for two years. In a way I'm thankful I learned so much about life and people in that time. I hit a massive low point in my life working with that man. But I came out stronger at the other end. He was never reprimanded for this, and all the other things he did, which was unfortunate. But I'm happy to now be earning way above what he is. And he's
    via u/Visual-Boat-Hire
  • 31
    probably still destroying his body in the name of being a rough b rd.
    via u/Visual-Boat-Hire
  • 32
    deterministic_ly... I was doing some kind of apprentice's/studying and working thing. During semester breaks we were working, or would need to take time off. That meant informing who you were working with (as soon as you would know), going through a tool process for requesting your time off,
    via u/deterministic_lynx
  • 33
    checking back it was approved. People were surprised when a colleague didn't show up on the first day after the semester. He hadn't called in sickm. After not being there until mid day, the department he should be at called our supervisor. The supervisor checked if there were time off or sickness and they simply forgot to inform department? Nope.
    via u/deterministic_lynx
  • 34
    So they called him. It took more than one try, but he answered and told them "oh yeah. I'm in new York. Sorry I forgot to inform the department or put in time off, I won't be there until two weeks." He was not fired - and this would be one of the few actual offenses for which that would have been possible. Which is hard in
    via u/deterministic_lynx
  • 35
    my country (rightfully so). Even worse, he was also not made to return immediately and I never heard anything about any other repercussions (albeit I simply may have missed them). I'm still blinking and wondering. That's not a "oopsie". It's traveling to another continent! It takes months of planning. Yet no
    via u/deterministic_lynx
  • 36
    one even knew. He didn't simply forget to enter it, he told no one. Not even colleagues. And nothing came of it.
    via u/deterministic_lynx
  • 37
    push_approved Almost caused an accident between 2 aircraft. Twice. They were let go about a month later for overall performance issues.
    via u/push_approved
  • 38
    emilyymads21 Leave 30 mins into the shift without telling anyone and logging it as a full 8hr day
    via u/emilyymads21
  • 39
    S... I worked at Coca Cola. A fellow driver was always short on his delivery truck. He got so bold that he stopped in the parking lot on the way back in and loaded soda into his trunk, on camera. CDL driver who will work are hard to come by, so they kept him. The most egregious thing. I've ever seen that resulted
    via u/sirreginaldfeatherb3
  • 40
    in termination was a Coca Cola also. A driver basically hired his own coworker. He was dropping his helper off down the street, going into work, leaving with the truck and picking him up. He split his pay with him. He would drive and let his "employee" settle the invoices and stock/merchandise. This man was never employed with Coke and I can only imagine how the story would go if there was a bad
    via u/sirreginaldfeatherb3
  • 41
    go if there was a bad accident or something. The second the next egregious firing was again at Coca-Cola. Jay Leno even commented on it. In Indiana PA, a Coke and Pepsi salesperson (account managers) got into a fistfight. The guys name was Bob and he got hired for a chip company after.
    via u/sirreginaldfeatherb3
  • 42
    This was the MOST TOXIC business and company I could have ever found. I regret my wasted years there, what a scumbag company/culture.
    via u/sirreginaldfeatherb3
  • 43
    SteamDecked Nothing Nothing at all Day in, day out, didn't lift a finger. Apparently, unless he did something egregious, he could just do nothing, collect a pay check and all benefits, and not get fired
    via u/SteamDecked
  • 44
    Omegaprimus This was at an electronics big box store. This one person was pulling overnight orders in the warehouse the orders were for some 65 and 70 inch TVs. Well they pulled one out went to get the second one and like dominos all the large TVs on
    via u/Omegaprimus
  • 45
    the rack fell over one after another it reached the end of the shelf and 6 took the dive after all was said and done at least 12 tvs destroyed
    via u/Omegaprimus
  • 46
    claymore2711 Watched a man, in a union shop, go to his car and take a 1/2 hour (timed) break, then work 45 minutes, then take antother 1/2 hour break, and did this the entire 12 hour shift. Security guard was told to film him, but not interfere. Mgmt could't fire him due to union.
    via u/claymore2711
  • 47
    [deleted] Repeatedly falsified temperature logs, and re dated old food at a KFC/Taco Bell. I asked about it, and was told "shut up, I'm the manager". Food had been held well within the danger zone (40-140 F) for far longer than is safe to do so, and the guy wrote down 39 and put it up to serve.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 48
    Why does Taco Bell have such a diarrheal reputation? This is why.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 49
    [deleted] Doing wheelies in 80ft booms.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 50
    OrigamiToad I used to work in an office with a girl who was a hairdresser on the side. There was more than one occasion she gave someone a haircut on the clock.... management didnt even bat an eye!
    via u/OrigamiToad
  • 51
    Ikendra15 Coworker saying discriminatory comments. about my age and others over 40. She wants herself to look good but it doesn't and she's still there.
    via u/Ikendra15
  • 52
    219_Infinity One of the secretaries in my office stood up on a Friday afternoon and screamed "f this, I've had it" and threw everything off her desk and walked out. Monday morning she walked back in and started working like nothing had happened. Nobody even said anything to her.
    via u/219_Infinity
  • 53
    [deleted] I worked in local government and we had a chronic sleeper in our group who was even caught sleeping in other people's work spaces. Instead of firing him, he was promoted with a pay increase to another department this becoming someone else's problem.
    via u/[deleted]

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