20+ Employees who got fired from their jobs: 'I told them they had better put the "Help Wanted" sign in the window'

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Apr 10, 2025 3:00 PM EDT

If you get fired for standing up for yourself, at least you know that you lived up to your own moral standards. 

While many companies care about their employees, there are tons of places who could care less. There are others that seem to go out of their way to make their employees miserable! For example, some retail places schedule their employees, including their best and most hardworking people, to do "clopening" shifts. These dreaded shifts are often something like 4 PM to midnight to close the store. Then, the very next day, just a few hours later, the employee is scheduled for a shift of 5 AM to 1 PM. It's a brutal shift to be assigned to. You basically close the store, sleep for a couple of hours, then drag yourself out of bed to reopen the store all over again. This is very bad for employees, obviously, but many places simply do not care. 

In office environments, some bosses just lack any tact or grace. Below there are a few stories of workers who needed to call out of work for good reasons, and yet were still scolded for it. If a worker needs to attend to something urgent and their boss still thinks that it's more important that the employee show up and sweep the floors, well, it might just be time to walk out the door and never return. 

Next, check out some businesses whose LED signs went out, leaving them with signs saying less appealing things like "Red Loser" and "Rat Beef Sandwich." 

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  • 01
    Cheezburger Image 10492390400
    via Leire Cavia For Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • 02
    captanal Telling my boss: "I'll be in on Monday if you have sh for me to do, but I'm not pushing a broom for 30 hours again this week." He said don't bother coming in anymore. I didn't.
    via u/
  • 03

    They deserved to be fired for this stunt

    grierju I worked at a movie theater. I got fired for washing out used drinking cups, adding them for inventory, selling them to customers and pocketing the profit.
    via u/grierju
  • 04
    wintremute I had finally averaged enough hours to force the company to make me full- time. Next day, pink slip.
    via u/wintremute
  • 05
    unseenshadow I worked for a collection agency years ago for seven days. I had been mislead and did not know I was going to be working collections but the money was good and I went through the week of training. The second week I'm on my own and this guy calls in and he is confused why he is in collections. He was a priest and his wife had a brain
    via u/unseenshadow
  • 06
    tumor and he ended up being exempt from the bills. I told him just to fax us over a copy of the paperwork and we would look at it. My manager called me over a little while later and explained that the paperwork was for another hospital. So I was like, okay I
    via u/unseenshadow
  • 07
    should just tell him to fill out the same forms for the other hospital. He responded with "You could do that, or you can do your job and get me his money." I called him back and told him what to do and was fired a few minutes later.
    via u/unseenshadow
  • 08
    greentangent Attending my cousin's funeral. Management said immediate family only were considered (child- grandparent + siblings). We were as close as brothers, closer than my actual
    via u/greentangent
  • 09
    brothers. They said I would be fired if I didn't skip his funeral to stock their Hungry-Man dinners and frozen juice. I told them they had better put the "Help Wanted" sign in the window.
    via u/greentangent
  • 10
    [deleted] I was fired from a bank for spending ALL of my time trying to bypass the internet filter.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 11
    Cheezburger Image 10492391168
    via Alicja Ziajowska on Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • 12
    [deleted] I was a bank teller and I didn't want to push credit products on poor people. Boss said he thought I'd be happier somewhere else. He was right.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 13
    SimplisticAnswer In college, I was working at an Applebees. I had put in my two week notice and this happened on day 12. A woman was complaining about how her ice tea was cloudy. I made a joke about our municipal water supply.
    via u/SimplisticAnswer
  • 14
    Turns out, she was on the board of the municipal water company. She later called my manager and threatened to call corporate if he didn't "do something about me." Well, I was fired. F that lady. Can you imagine getting someone fired for something so stupid.
    via u/SimplisticAnswer
  • 15
    Signal_Maintainer Quitting.. I was fired for quitting my very first job. I was 18 and was working at a gas station. just down the street from my house. Shortly after I got my job there I found a better paying job doing tech support in a call center for HP (I know right)
    via u/Signal_Maintainer
  • 16
    I have my boss at the gas station ~3 weeks notice that I would be leaving for a different job. He was the nicest guy I'd met but he lost his mind when I said I was leaving. He accused me of just wanting to work there for a paycheck and didn't care about his gas station and I just wanted free cash. register training? who needs that but whatever. He tells me I can't quit because
    via u/Signal_Maintainer
  • 17
    he's firing me (straight out of a bad movie). I say whatever and left and caught the bus home. A couple weeks goes by and I haven't got my final paycheck yet, which wasn't much, maybe about $125. I called the gas station and he said he wasn't going to mail it to me and that I had to come in and pick it up myself. So I got a friend to pick me up and drive me
    via u/Signal_Maintainer
  • 18
    down to the station and my old boss is sitting behind the glass with some smug look on his face when I see it.. It's a big bag of change that we used to do money drops at the bank in. He says thanks for up his gas station and accused me of stealing a vanilla pepsi (if anybody remembers those). My friend and I drive around the corner to count the
    via u/Signal_Maintainer
  • 19
    money to make sure it was all there and when I open the bag I finally see what's in it. Pennies. Only pennies.. there isn't a single nickel, dime quarter or loonie.. F I. I had to laugh because at the same time that I was p ed off I still thought it was a pretty funny thing to do someone, even if that someone was
    via u/Signal_Maintainer
  • 20
    me. It took about 10 minutes to count out $20 in pennies with my buddy and we drove back around to get some gas.. Because the boss never worked the till he didn't know we had come back until I went inside with my shirt rolled up full of pennies which I proceeded to unload onto the counter, with the majority of them spilling over the edge onto the floor.
    via u/Signal_Maintainer
  • 21
    Boss came running out from the back freaking out and telling me to get out and I was never allowed back in there.. Worth it..
    via u/Signal_Maintainer
  • 22
    je... When i was a teenaged telemarketer I told a customer to s k on my b S. edit: quick story. I had given my 2 weeks' notice and they were evidently monitoring all of my calls to find a reason to fire me (no idea why this is what they do). So the customer says something to
    via u/
  • 23
    the effect of "why don't you get a real job?", and I replied with "why don't you s k on my bills?" Then I was escorted out. A coworker of mine saw me at school the next day and told me that everyone told her to thank me for saying something we've all dreamed of saying. Silver lining.
    via u/
  • 24
    MattRyd7 Having a temporary summer job during college and being two days away from becoming a member of the union (you're automatically in after 90 days). Union employees receive three dollars more an hour.
    via u/
  • 25
    t... I was a server at a family owned restaurant. I had already been working there for a year and a half when the owners daughter decided she wanted to get involved in the business and she started serving also. A couple weeks later one of the daughter's friends started working there too. It sucked because bringing them on was cutting into my
    via u/
  • 26
    tips and the friend was just an overall awful person. About a month into this whole situation, the friend said that she wasn't feeling well and asked if I could cover the rest of her closing shift for her (I was scheduled to go home early that night). I agreed because that meant more money for me. After I finish closing, I get pulled aside by the owner and he basically says,
    via u/
  • 27
    "I really appreciate you stepping up like that, but we're terminating you." When I asked why, he just said a bunch of little things in a way that I could tell he was talking out of his a i. A couple weeks later, I ran into one of the servers that had been working there for ~15 years and asked if she knew anything about it. She said that, from what she could tell, they couldn't afford to
    via u/
  • 28
    keep on all of us and I got the axe because I wasn't related to the family personally. TL;DR Nepotism Edit: I guess it's also worth mentioning that the friend quit six weeks later.
    via u/
  • 29
    -eDgAR- I got fired from Borders because the person that was covering for me while I was on vacation got fired.
    via u/
  • 30
    [... I gave my friends free ice cream. EDIT: seriously though, stealing hurts everyone because it makes prices go up and that isn't cool, no matter how cool ice cream is.
    via u/
  • 31
    R... The last time I got fired was for not doing enough work. I deserved it. This was 9 years ago. BUT The boss was a about it. And I vowed revenge. I was forced to take whatever job in my field I could find, which landed me in another state. I was lucky
    via u/
  • 32
    to go to a firm that was great about teaching anyone who worked there all the skills they cared to learn. I learned a ton about my business. Then I moved to another job in another state, where I learned even more about the business and got better at being a good worker. Then I found a job in my home state. Within the first few months we went up
    via u/
  • 33
    against the firm who fired me for a contract with a local city. My new boss said "go get em" and I did. We won the contract. This was a big deal because the firm that fired me works almost exclusively in the the specific field the contract was for, while it's only a passing interest for the firm I'm at now. But, due to my presence, we're picking up more and more business, creeping further into the
    via u/
  • 34
    territory of the firm who fired me. And now my current, benevolent boss, wants to sell me the business. Which will make me free to compete with the firm who
    via u/
  • 35
    fired me AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE. The firm I will be taking over has a better staff, better resources, and a better reputation. This is a fight I CAN WIN. I've probably got another 20 years of career left. I'm coming for you, Mike.
    via u/
  • 36
    Wackoman1 I was working at a grocery store in the bakery. I dropped a muffin on the ground and ate some of it instead of throwing it out. I got fired for stealing. It probably didn't help that I was working full time hours. as a part timer... But that's their fault for making me a Lead.
    via u/
  • 37
    here_involuntarily I worked in a call centre for 6 whole days. It was for a catalogue clothing company. I was trained on the job. On my first day unsupervised, a guy called in and yelled at me for his parcels being left in the rain. I explained that was nothing to do with us and he got more angry and said I kept messing up his order and had sent him the wrong size and the wrong
    via u/
  • 38
    thing before and he wants this put right. He called me a bunch of names and said I was really stupid and clearly can't do my job. I explained I was new, I couldn't control what is sent or how it is posted, but I would go get my manager as he needs to speak to someone more senior than myself. I transferred him over, and the person next to me asked if I was ok. I said no, the guy
    via u/
  • 39
    was really mean to me, how did he think it was me, a phone monkey, who controlled his mail? Turns out, I never transferred him over properly, he heard me, and complained to the manager.
    via u/
  • 40
    PatrickAplomb I sent a coworker a text of a creepy clown saying my name was Bobo. I said sh like "I'm stalking you..." and other stuff. Then we got super busy at work and I forgot to text her back saying it was me...Her parents called the cops, and they traced it back to me. I was pretty stupid...
    via u/
  • 41
    B Kyler Kept hurting myself on the job. Former gymnastics instructor.
    via u/
  • 42
    R... Over the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college, I got staffed to work as a "Secure Document Processing Specialist" through a temporary placement agency. While that may sound like a position with some level of excitement or intrigue, it sadly suffered from the same issue that so many such jobs do... namely,
    via u/
  • 43
    that a remarkably dull and mundane task had been given an interesting name. My mission, in short, was to take old Workman's Compensation files, scan the bar-code on them, and then type a six-digit number into a database. This arduous task would indicate that the document had been destroyed, at which point the item in question would be placed into a container
    via u/
  • 44
    for future shredding. That was it. That was the whole job. Although my dreams of becoming an entry-level spy had all but did when I'd initially walked into the cramped office full of outdated computers, those fantasies were well and truly crushed by the time that I'd finished my first four hours of employment there. About
    via u/
  • 45
    the only form of entertainment that we had was a dilapidated radio (which seemed to have contracted a bizarre form of static-based whooping cough), and the only in- office sustenance that was offered came from the bowels of a gargantuan machine which purported itself to provide a selection of either coffee, tea, or - in all seriousness - chicken soup.
    via u/
  • 46
    Not that it mattered which button you pushed, mind you, because the mechanical behemoth would always shudder, whine, and then spurt out the same vaguely yellow liquid that might very well have been an industrial lubricant of some kind. You might think that I got fired for attempting to amuse myself by reading through the Workman's
    via u/
  • 47
    Compensation claims, and while my coworkers and I did occasionally see a few of them - purely by accident, I - assure you the truth was far more farcical. See, after working in that office for a little over a day, I discovered that my bar-code reader could be used both for scanning the files to be destroyed and for marking them as such. I didn't even need to touch my computer, except on those occasions
    via u/
  • 48
    when an errant space or something had been accidentally entered. Thus, using no more than a desk lamp and a few creatively placed rubber bands, I managed to devise a mostly automated means of doing my job. With this system in place, the only thing required of me was to grab a stack of file folders, arrange them
    via u/
  • 49
    beneath the scanner (so that the laser would fall on their bar-codes), and start pulling them away, one by one. I showed my setup to the other people in the office, and suddenly, our work output went up exponentially. A job that was slated to last more than a month was suddenly finished in less than half of that time, and I was certain that I'd receive some kind of commendation for my
    via u/
  • 50
    ingenuity. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten one important detail: I wasn't employed by the company for which I'd been working; I was employed by a temporary placement agency. Those agencies, if you're not aware, make their money by staffing out employees... and a shortened job meant less. time with those employees in rotation, which translates
    via u/
  • 51
    to less money for the agency. I'd certainly saved someone a fair chunk of change, but not the right someone. When it came time for my end-of-job report to the agency in question, I was summarily fired. Their reason was that I had "failed to remain present until the scheduled end of the contract."
    via u/
  • 52
    TL;DR: Efficiency effectively ends employment.
    via u/
  • 53
    [... Consistently showing up late... to a job that took me over 2 hours to drive to, in the worst traffic possible. I had to leave by 6:30am at the latest to try to get there by 8:30. The commute made me hate my job, and I started showing it at work. Took a vacation, and the minute I came back they fired me. Like, I woke up,
    via u/
  • 54
    drove to work and hated it the whole way there, and then they fired me as soon as I got there. Honestly, that drive back was the happiest 2 hours of being in traffic I've ever experienced, because f that job.
    via u/
  • 55
    D BOD 1000
    via liu xin on Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • 56
    li….. Seeing rats in the pizzeria kitchen. Everyone else had gone home for the night except me (mopping up) and the manager (counting out the day's income). I went to mop the kitchen and a rat was in front of the walk in fridge. It saw me and ran up the pizza oven into the ceiling above it. I told my manager
    via u/
  • 57
    obviously, and he said he knew about the problem and was working on it. I finished mopping and went to leave, and when I opened the back door, another rat ran inside. The next day, first thing, the manager pulls me aside and says he has to let me go. Just days before we'd talk about promoting me from wait staff to delivery driver. He said the reason was profits were down, and since
    via u/
  • 58
    I was the last one hired, I was the first to go. I would've believed him if he hadn't hired on one of my friends about four days later. So I can only assume it had something to do with me. seeing those rats. I went on to get an internship at a mineral rights company, and the pizza place got shut down three weeks later by the health inspector.
    via u/
  • 59
    EDIT: No, I didn't report it. He said he was working on it, and I wasn't going to destroy his livelihood just because he fired me. I put my energy into getting a new, better job instead.
    via u/
  • 60
    EDIT II: No, I wasn't going to blackmail him. I was a rising sophomore looking to make rent. And up until I figured out later he lied to me when he fired me, I had no reason to think he wasn't working to catch the rats. I guess you guys must call the health dept. a lot more than I do.
    via u/
  • 61
    C... My very first job was a cook at KFC, started on my 16th bday. job ever. Long story short, after about 6 months on the job I was at work one day and a customer came up to the counter screaming that the chicken tasted "old". I heard the commotion and came up front to see was going on.
    via u/
  • 62
    The customer saw me, asked if I was the cook, and as soon as I said yes, she threw a piece of chicken at me. I ducked and the chicken projectile missed. 16 year old me wasnt having any of that, so I picked up the piece she threw at me and I returned fire. The chicken hit her right in the face. She screamed murder, and my manager saw it all happen. He
    via u/
  • 63
    apologized to her and fired me on the spot. Cowardly managers never do anyone any good.
    via u/

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