15+ Employees who watched their coworkers get fired: 'HR cleaned out his desk within 10 minutes'

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Apr 15, 2025 5:00 PM EDT

We don't always see when our coworkers get fired: instead, rumors quickly spread around the workplace. 

When your coworker gets fired, you might find out when you arrive in the office to find their area has been cleared out. Instead of their personal items decorating their desk, there's just a blank desk and a laptop sitting there. Then, someone will usually clue you in that your coworker has gotten the boot. It's often surprising, and you find out later that the person you thought you knew so well was actually up to some shady business! 

Next up, read about some absolutely hilarious answers that some job candidates gave their job interviewers, like one person who said, "Is this going to take long? I'm parked in a 15 minute spot." 

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  • 01

    "What’s the worst thing a coworker got fired for where you work?"

    kaylala0630 Office manager was using the company credit card for personal purchases
    via u/kaylala0630

    Yikes… there's no good excuse for that! 

  • 02
    Glove BatBall Buddy working loss prevention discovered a theft ring at work involving numerous employees and suppliers. Chief of Operations' son and his best friend turned out to be in that ring. Buddy was fired.
    via u/Glove BatBall
  • 03
    Sea-Vast-8826 A guy who the entire office considered to be, well, 3 cans short of a 12 pack got. to have a meeting with our regional director and his manager about both poor performance and a co- worker saying he threatened him. He was apparently asked to leave said co- worker alone and to come to a follow up meeting the following Monday with a
    via u/Sea-Vast-8826
  • 04
    personal plan to improve his results. He showed up to work Monday in a great mood, dressed nice, chatting with us all... he went to the meeting with his plan, and his plan (written down) was to simply threaten to s our regional director in his face if he was asked about poor performance again. He apparently claimed it was a joke.
    via u/Sea-Vast-8826
  • 05
    Police escorted him out and HR cleaned out his desk within 10 minutes. Very surreal for a Monday morning LOL. No he never showed up again and I haven't heard about him since.
    via u/Sea-Vast-8826
  • 06
    Cheezburger Image 10493912576
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

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

  • 07
    Disastrous_Rub... Someone got fired for having an affair with a coworker. The worst part was how his wife found out. She worked in IT security and his termination showed up in her inbox to process.....
    via u/Disastrous_Rub_6062
  • 08

    This sounds like very flimsy reasoning for firing someone

    Error262_USRn... during a mass layoff....i was fired for receiving a fantasy football invite on company email, from my direct supervisor, i was fired for not turning the supervisor in for sending the email...wild right.
    via u/Error262_USRnotfound
  • 09
    MusicHearted I got fired for getting frustrated with my direct supervisor for constantly trying to make me stay as late as possible (I was the only woman in the department and he actively tried to make me stay after everyone else left). I told HR
    via u/MusicHearted
  • 10
    I don't feel safe staying hours late alone with a man who seemed very bent on getting me alone, got fired within a week with no explanation.
    via u/MusicHearted
  • 11
    fshannon3 A bit tame compared to some others here... When I worked retail nearly 30 years ago, this girl that worked at the customer service/returns counter was fired (and arrested) for embezzling. She had been there for a few years prior and I guess she eventually figured out how to work the system in her favor.
    via u/fshannon3
  • 12
    Whenever someone would come in to get a refund on a purchase, she was able to key it so that the customer would get their money back, and she would also pocket the same amount. I don't know the specifics of how she did it, but she did. She was being investigated for a few months before the arrest was made...she stole about $30K from the store.
    via u/fshannon3
  • 13
    They hauled her out in cuffs right in the middle of the workday. She didn't seem like the stereotypical person that would fit such a crime either.
    via u/fshannon3
  • 14
    AngryOldGenXer Theft. This is one of those "You Can't Make This Sh Up" stories. The short story is this, it was a big box store. A department head would take items to the receiving area, go to the UPS book, label the stuff, and ship it to his girlfriend's house. So not only was he stealing product, but the company was paying for shipping as well.
    via u/AngryOldGenXer
  • 15
    [deleted] For being pretty and popular. She was hired as a receptionist and did a great job. The customers loved her. We loved her. The bitter hag in charge of HR? Did not love her. I'll never forget the day she came back to clear out her desk. She walked in
    via u/[deleted]
  • 16
    with her two MinPins on bedazzled leashes, got her stuff and on her way out she leaned into the HR lady's office and said, "I'll be praying for you, you miserable b ". The entire front office silently clapped lol
    via u/[deleted]
  • 17
    costabius Getting so white-girl-wasted while working in a foreign country that the local consulate needed to get involved so she could get out of the country without being arrested. Company paid several bribes and a hefty cleaning bill to make the issue go away. Fired her before she came into the office the next day.
    via u/costabius
  • 18
    InsightJ15 Not going to work, faking an injury and abusing the paid leave system. That was our HR manager. She hired an 'Administration Assistant' to do all her office work for her as well.
    via u/InsightJ15
  • 19
    Preposterous_p... Worked a long-term temp job in a small branch loan office of a bank. It was a major bank, but we were in a very small city. First my boss's boss got fired because she used company funds to buy a bunch of bus stop ads for the bank. Her husband had used them for his real estate business and they did great.
    via u/Preposterous_punk
  • 20
    She honestly thought the big bosses would be thrilled with the business it brought in, and she didn't ask anyone first because she wanted to impress them with her initiative. I was there when her boss first came in to talk to her, frantic and spluttering as he tried to explain about marketing departments in New York and approval and guidelines and things. She kept saying
    via u/Preposterous_punk
  • 21
    that the ads weren't for the whole bank, just for our branch, so it was fine and no one would care. She was just so dumb. (I might have felt bad for her if she hadn't been the kind of boss who timed people's bathroom breaks.)
    via u/Preposterous_punk
  • 22
    Then my boss, who'd always been her little toadie, got fired for trying to start a petition to get her un-fired, and went around asking for signatures from clients as well as employees. (I don't know how she thought any of that would work.) She might have kept her job if she'd apologized, but she acted all shocked and indignant when they said she had to stop.
    via u/Preposterous_punk
  • 23
    I kinda got let go too because of it, because I knew all about the ads and petition as they were happening and didn't think to tell anyone. My temp agency stood up for me though and said that wasn't my job; that they could end the contract but they couldn't put down that I'd been let go for doing anything wrong.
    via u/Preposterous_punk
  • 24
    Sherwoody20 At McDonalds nicking a bit of a chicken select that was going to be thrown out anyway for theft - apparently
    via u/Sherwoody20
  • 25
    SweetCosmicPo... So I had a supervisor when I worked for the gas company. He had just been promoted to that role within a year before this event happened. For whatever reason he was itching to fire somebody. Now, this was a union shop, so he couldn't just fire somebody for the h I of it because we had union
    via u/SweetCosmicPope
  • 26
    protections that kept him from doing so. Strong ones. He started going around saying things like "so and so is a thief, I think I'm going to fire him. And he's your buddy, so I might need to fire you too." or "I don't think x is working out, I may just have to let him go." It got to the point that a couple of the guys got together and filed a grievance. They went
    via u/SweetCosmicPope
  • 27
    around the whole shop and got everybody (minus one who just graduated college and was trying to get an engineering role with the company and was concerned this would affect that) to sign, including myself. I had only started at the job maybe 6 months earlier than that, so I was still fairly new. So I was at home watching tv when I got a call from my
    via u/SweetCosmicPope
  • 28
    supervisor on his personal phone (I could tell he was in tears) begging me to go. back and tell them I was coerced into signing it and that he didn't do anything wrong, and "how could you do this to me? I'm the one who hired you, after all." Corporate sent my double- skip-level down to talk to us all and get our stories, and it kind of felt like it was going to be a hand slap at best, in
    via u/SweetCosmicPope
  • 29
    my opinion...until they started hearing about the phone calls to our homes and trying to get us to backtrack and stuff. They called us to the meeting room later that day and let us know our supervisor had been let go.
    via u/SweetCosmicPope
  • 30
    They actually ended up promoting our union steward to the supervisor role (which effectively put him out of the union) and it was much better around there going forward.
    via u/SweetCosmicPope
  • 31
    Lughnasadh32 Eating raw carrots at her desk. The sound bothered one of the 'golden' employees and after a week of him complaining, she was gone.
    via u/Lughnasadh32
  • 32
    Cheezburger Image 10493913344
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

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

  • 33
    ChewMaN Worked at a tech start up right after this occurred. The company had just blew up and gotten a big investment and one employee decided he was gonna cash in on that. So he took the company credit card and whenever the company would be spending money on a client he would be spending it on himself.
    via u/ChewMaN***
  • 34
    Lavish trips to Vegas, 1000$ dinners, high end services. Only with him there wasn't any clients it was just him making it up. He racked in almost 500k in debt before they caught on and fired/sued him.
    via u/ChewMaN***
  • 35
    The sad thing since he was one of the starting employees he would of made out with a lot of cash when the company eventually got bought out.
    via u/ChewMaN***
  • 36
    [deleted] Building a cardboard fort. Was later caught coming out of it after taking a nap.
    via u/[deleted]

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terrible coworkers boss workplace-stories jobs employee work stories job bosses work coworkers working employees workplace coworker
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