15+ Bosses who had the worst workers: '[She was] sleeping on the job. She was a lifeguard. Fired on the spot'

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Apr 15, 2025 11:00 AM EDT

Every workplace has a few employees that make you wonder how they've kept their job this long. 

When you're at your job, working as hard as you can while your boss breaths down your neck, it's guaranteed you have that one coworker who's content to kick back and watch YouTube at their desk for a while. For whatever reason, that coworker doesn't mind the scrutiny from the boss (or maybe they're a nepo-hire who can get away with literally anything!). 

Some people think that the worst employee is the one who never does anything fireable, but also just makes everyone else's jobs harder. It's the person in your office job who you email with important info, then you don't hear from them for 2 weeks because they "don't read their emails." Or if you're in the retail world, it's the person who you ask to cover your register, only to find them chatting with every customer, making the line move at a snail's pace. Could these people be fired for these things? No. Instead, they'll remain at their jobs, making everyone else's day a little more annoying. 

Next, read about the Corvette driver who got tricked by a petty college student: 'It was taking up 4 spots.'

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    Cheezburger Image 10493726208
    via u/Dane Deaner
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    "Bosses/Managers of Reddit: what was your worst employee like?"

    [deleted] The one that had to be repeatedly sent home to shower and change.
    via u/[deleted]
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    SpaceCampRejects The company I work for is pretty hard to get into, even if you have an impressive resume or an awesome reference. Unfortunately we had a new client. In 1 quarter his business would keep our lights on for about 10 years. He asked if his cousin or "little nephew" could have an entry level position at our company and we reluctantly said yes.
    via u/SpaceCampRejects
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    The kid surfed the web all day looking at cars to buy. Whenever we'd ask him if he completed a task he'd either lie to us and say he did or say he didn't know how to do it and didn't want to bother any of us for help. Then he brought in all of his gaming systems into the conference room saying that clients could play them while they waited. Which would have been nice but he played games in the
    via u/SpaceCampRejects
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    conference room all day. So it came to a point where we gave him the least amount of work to do (ordering paper, delivering lunch, etc). Two years later the client comes to us and says that he's going to have his nephew handle the work he was giving us for him/ helping him start his own consulting firm. Apparently the kid lied like no other making his uncle believe
    via u/SpaceCampRejects
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    that he was helping run our company. 3 months later he came back to us for our business. Nephew tried hiring a consulting firm to the side to do his work so he could play Sonic the Hedgehog all day.
    via u/SpaceCampRejects
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    [deleted] Guy who was constantly on his phone. Had a sh don't stink attitude. And always failed miserably with hitting on the female employees, but never stopped.
    via u/[deleted]
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    ma... We were hospital aides on an inpatient floor. So we changed incontinent patients, did vitals, helped patients walked to and from the bathroom or chairs, that kind of stuff. Nurses depended on us to do our jobs so they could do theirs. This girl would avoid doing any work she could. She'd constantly hide in one of the
    via u/mamblepamble
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    back nursing stations and hunker down where she couldn't be seen and read. She'd ignore callbells for select patients who were known to be incontinent and messy. Just sit and read while the bell went off and wait for one of the others to grab it. She was allotted a 30min break and constantly took up to an hour. When she was training a new girl, she encouraged the same work avoidance behavior.
    via u/mamblepamble
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    Then she got busted for falsifying vitals. She was upset that she couldn't take her break on her schedule, so when she did go she was gone for an hour and a half. She came back after the second round of vitals for her shift was due, so instead of getting her a in gear she made them up. Manually typed bulls into the computer instead of taking vitals on the machine and saving them (they went to a
    via u/mamblepamble
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    Wi-Fi cloud to the chart) What ended up happening was she put an average bl d pressure measurement (think 130/85) on a patient whose normal parameters were about 90/60. So the nurse sees this, notice the patients bl d pressure is 40 points. higher than it should be, so she gives him a dose of BP meds. His BP tanks, the patient nearly dies. It's a
    via u/mamblepamble
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    shitshow. She gets busted because our heart monitor tech suspected what had happened, gathered ALL the vitals machines and printed out copies of every set of vitals that had been taken that evening. Even if you don't save it to the cloud under a patients name, the machine saves it.
    via u/mamblepamble
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    None of the numbers matched the ones this girl put in the computer which proved she hadn't done her job. Who knows how long she'd been doing that without getting caught. We'd get busy and lose track of her all the time. Because of that tech the nurse wasn't in trouble and that aide got fired. Good Riddance.
    via u/mamblepamble
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    ETA: she wasn't prosecuted. I strongly believe she should have. My bosses thought it was embarrassing and figured firing her was enough. The day she was fired we had a prescheduled employee meeting, an hour before the eveninf shift started. She was late to that and was floated to another unit, so flounced off before the bosses could say "wait
    via u/mamblepamble
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    wait". So she takes her purse to another unit. Gets called back, gets shown the evidence and she confesses and is fired. Has to walk back to the other unit to get her purse. Has to walk to our unit to get her coat and empty her locker. Had to wait for security to take her ID. The entire time she is sobbing. She wore a lot of makeup and looked a disaster.
    via u/mamblepamble
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    It ended up being very public and embarrassing for her. The entire small hospital knew. She still deserved to be charged. But I hoped she learned something.
    via u/mamblepamble
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    8337 The worst employee you can have is one that doesn't do anything egregious enough to fire, but manages to make every single workday that much more aggravating. The worst guy had an attention span of a gnat. You had to write down instructions for everything, even tasks he'd done a million times before, and
    via u/8337
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    check in on him every 15 minutes or so. And yet, given these parameters, he'd complete perfect work. Every year during performance reviews, we'd argue about whether or not to keep him on. And every year, we'd keep him on, because the devil you know... I mean, at least we knew how to manage him, and he was manageable.
    via u/8337
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    in_flagrante_delic... Showed up unusually early to find her sleeping on the job. She was a lifeguard. Fired on the spot.
    via u/in_flagrante_delicto
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    Cheezburger Image 10493774848
    via Autumn Mott Rodeheaver on Unsplash+

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

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    I_throw_socks_at... Angry. Many years ago I ran an email helpline for an ISP. The company never actually made me a manager, but there were nine full-time staff and three part-timers taking orders from me. One of them, who I never saw because he worked nights, wrote replies to customer email that bordered on
    via u/I_throw_socks_at_cat
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    ab ive. My manager had me re-doing his work during the day, and told me not to speak to him about it. I assumed they were using the opportunity to build an HR case against him, but they never took any action. He just went on like that until years later when he resigned to take a job with a different company.
    via u/I_throw_socks_at_cat
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    [deleted] lazy, incompetent, couldn't handle ANY criticism, and SHE STOLE MY FOOD. She was very overweight and anything I ate she would stare down and be like "ohhhh my godddd that looks so gooood" I was the manager of a very small business, just me and two girls under me so we spent a lot of time together. She would talk about how she
    via u/[deleted]
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    couldn't buy groceries or keep her utilities on but she wanted to have another baby. and she was cheating on her husband. I hated her so much it gave me anxiety. She f ed up my business too because of her mistakes and our clients hated her. I eventually told my boss it. was her or me. Boss didn't like confrontation so I said okay and took a job elsewhere. The girl ended
    via u/[deleted]
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    up getting fired but it was too late. I wasn't going to stick around after that. Oh and several times she took her antipsychotic meds during the day (I think they were meant to be taken at night) and ptfo. She slept through the phone ringing and me yelling her name because I needed help. Ugh. I get mad just thinking about it.
    via u/[deleted]
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    And if you read this Haley, you're a garbage person.
    via u/[deleted]
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    Cultured_Ignorance Always late and always asked when we could take a break. Every day he had some injury which excused him from working hard like the other guys. He wanted to use a company truck to pick up a girl he was seeing to go to dinner. One day he showed up at the job site at noon and said he had court
    via u/Cultured_Ignorance
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    that morning. Never let me know and had no paperwork to prove it. Fired him there on the spot and have no idea what he's doing now.
    via u/Cultured_Ignorance
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    NachOMan_Randy... We had a guy at my movie. theater who could never do anything important. Like we would be shutting down concessions for the night so everyone could go home and I would find him in the back making kid pack boxes, which definitely weren't needed. Or we'd have a
    via u/Nach0Man_RandySavage
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    giant movie in theaters that needed to be turned around quickly and he would be meticulously sweeping less than 1/2 a row while there were other huge messes and customers waiting.
    via u/Nach0Man_RandySavage
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    mr_cup I work as an English teacher in Japan teaching at Elementary schools. It's really simple basic English and the job really just involves playing games with the kids using English. It's also my job to train in new staff. The new guy comes over to my place and I go through 4
    via u/
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    weeks of lesson plans in great detail and tell him just to follow them to the letter and he'll be fine!! Once he finds his feet he'll be able to make his own lesson plans. Next week I get an email from my boss saying all his schools complained about his lessons saying they were too difficult for the students and he was arguing with the homeroom teachers.
    via u/
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    So I arranged to meet him again to follow up. I asked him what happened. He said he forgot what I had told him to do and hadn't taken enough notes. When I asked him why he didn't call me he said 'oh yeah. Maybe I should've done that'
    via u/
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    He also seems to think that it's the fault of the Japanese education system if they think his lesson are too difficult!! Skip forward 3 months and this has been a pattern. I'm interviewing for his replacement this weekend!!
    via u/
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    LobsterBloops93 Was a manager at a fast food place for a while. You'd think my worst would have been some teenager that slacked off or didn't listen. Mind you, I'm only 24. I was 19-21 as manager. This new employee did NOT like that I, a CHILD as she put it, was above her. She would constantly undermine my authority. And I wasn't a
    via u/
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    micromanager or even got loud. My way was "Hey, d'you want to check on lobby?" Not demanding but asking nicely. That's how I was trained by my manager. I would get "No, I don't." Instead of "Nah, but sure." So I started saying, "Spotted a few dirty tables. Could you take care of it?"
    via u/
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    Eventually I appealed to the owners that she should have a talk with us privately about her attitude an unwillingness to accept me as her manager. In the talk she made it very clear that she would not ever accept a teenager (key word) as her superior. I was 20, but I do look younger. When we
    via u/
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    explained I was well out of high school her attitude flipped. Suddenly she was like "Oh! So you are an adult. That's ok then." We still let her go for her blatant disregard of authority. That and she was a lazy sh anyway.
    via u/
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    jenorama_CA I managed a hoarder and I had to fire him. He had a of personal stuff in his office and even after taking all of that home, he still had enough sh in his office to fill two enormous wheeled bins to the very top.
    via u/
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    CDC_ You really can't fire someone for being slow. Like.. I guess you can but.. you can't. I manage a restaurant. There are certain people who are just slow. And no amount of practice is going to change that. They just move at this pace that isn't conducive to working a cook line. You can do all the coaching in the
    via u/
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    world, and it won't matter. There's this one guy we'll call Jordan. Jordan moves at the speed of mud. His mouth is always slacked open and he speaks in such a monosyllabic fashion that you'd wonder if it was a put- on. We have Texas toast where I work. The procedure for dropping Texas toast is as follows. Pick up piece of
    via u/
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    bread, brush garlic butter across piece of bread, drop on flat top for 45 seconds. Flip for an additional 45 seconds. Serve. The end. Simple. I can drop an entire loaf of Texas Toast in under 20 seconds, followed by the 2-45 second cook times. This is a SIMPLE PROCEDURE. Jordan stands there with his loose jaw flapping in the wind meticulously placing
    via u/
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    garlic butter on every square inch of each piece of bread, resulting in one piece of toast being completely toasted by the time the next piece hits the flat top. I've gone over to him and demonstrated time and again. "Jordan, it's a quick process. Brush, drop, brush, drop, brush, drop, brush, drop, hit timer. Wait. Flip. Hit timer again. Serve." He nods
    via u/
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    his head affirmatively then proceeds to butter every square inch of the bread again. He walks one-foot per minute to the fridge to grab cheese sticks to drop in the fryer. He spends 5 solid minutes putting chicken on a plate. He's horrible.
    via u/
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    Half the time I just tell him to go do dishes. But I can't really fire him because TECHNICALLY he's not doing anything WRONG exactly, he's just doing a poor version of the correct thing.
    via u/
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    Cheezburger Image 10493779712
    via sandevil sandh on Unsplash+

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

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    [d... The worst employee I've known is a girl who told me she hated waking up to come to work so in order to sleep longer in the morning, she would put her clothes on the night before and sleep in them and roll out of bed and come straight to work. She never wore pants,
    via u/
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    only thick leggings under heavy skirts. She lived with her parents and their 20 cats and would always be covered in cat hair. She didn't brush her hair and always wore a beanie, even inside. She eventually got fired due to it as she was a sales rep for our company.
    via u/
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    [deleted] I had an employee who would show up. Then leave after an hour. His average shift length was ~2 hours. He was scheduled full time. It was the night shift so the head managers either didn't believe me or refused to fire him for some reason. They kept saying they couldnt find a replacement.
    via u/
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    Unfortunately for me my ability to fire somebody was stripped from my position company wide like 6 months prior. All expulsions needed to be brought to my boss first. I did however, have the ability to send people home in extreme circumstances.
    via u/
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    I exercised this several times when the employee became combative to the point of screaming and cussing when I asked him to do simple tasks. My bosses refusal to stick up for me or to punish him in anyway made that job into a h l.
    via u/
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    I eventually quit and they begged me to come back because none of the other managers wanted to work night shift.
    via u/

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