'HR showed him the camera footage': 20+ Employees whose huge mistakes got them immediately fired

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Jul 1, 2025 11:00 AM EDT

Messing up in front of the big boss can lead to immediate job termination. It only takes one wrong word in front of one wrong person to lead a worker suddenly out of a job. 

Some workers think they're entirely immune to getting in trouble. Maybe they've been at the same workplace for decades, and have gotten cozy enough that they've started breaking not just one or two rules, but a dozen. Under the watchful eye of management (not to mention the dozens of cameras some workspaces have) they soon find out that management isn't taking kindly to their rule-bending. 

Others didn't even get the chance to linger on after their mistakes. Making one off-color joke can get you immediately canned. Whether you're in a Zoom meeting or in the middle of a crowded office, that's just not a "mistake" that HR professionals take lightly.

Check out the wild ways that these people got shown the door. Then, read about some waiters who made unforgettable mistakes at their jobs, from dropping food on children, to dropping cheese rounds into a lady's purse: "We had a great laugh afterwards." 

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  • 01

    "What is the most unprofessional thing an employee has done that resulted in immediate termination?"

    maceman10006 I was a kitchen supervisor in a nursing home and we had a dishwasher on his 3rd day pull the fire alarm on purpose to get out of his shift. I was part of the investigation since I was the supervisor on duty. He gave HR a wild story that him and another coworker were rough housing and he was pushed into the alarm, and as he fell his shirt got
    via u/maceman10006
  • 02
    caught on the lever and pulled it. HR then showed him the camera footage of him looking to make sure nobody was watching, then pulling the alarm on purpose. After he was fired we found out from another coworker he was also suspended from his highschool a couple months. ago for pulling the alarm at school.
    via u/maceman10006
  • 03
    WitchesSphincter Worked at an automotive OEM and only 2 types of summary terminations I saw. One was leaking photos of preproduction items and stealing. My favorite was a guy stole a set of prototype tires/rims and then just put them on his truck in the parking lot.
    via u/WitchesSphincter
  • 04
    Manager who had been looking for said missing items happened by the truck walking into work, realized those were the tires he was missing. Fired the dude on the spot, but also took their tires back while he was being fired. So when he walked out jobless his truck was on supports with no tires.
    via u/WitchesSphincter
  • 05

    This is so unacceptable for a nurse to do, and firing her was 100% the right call

    Silli_Filli Many, many years ago, I had an Ob/Gyn appointment. A test had come back abnormal and things had to be discussed. I was young and scared. All I heard was CANCER and infertility. I just started crying. My doctor was wonderful and explained everything. I was reassured, but still scared.
    via u/Silli_Filli
  • 06
    The doctor and her nurse left the room and I got dressed. As I left the examination room, walking by the nurses' area, I saw (and heard) her nurse mocking me. "WAAAAAH, can I still have kids? WAAAH!!" Not only was I hurt, but also I was p ed! As I was rushing to leave, I passed the doctor's office. She was sitting at her desk doing
    via u/Silli_Filli
  • 07
    paperwork. I knocked on her door jamb with tears in my eyes. I thanked her for being wonderful. But told her I wouldn't be treated that way by her nurse. She then asked me what I meant. When I told her, she took me by the hand and together we walked back to the nurses' desk. She directly asked her if what I said was true. The nurse fumbled over her words.
    via u/Silli_Filli
  • 08
    Basically said yes, but she didn't mean anything by it. The doctor said, "Get your things and get out of my office. You're fired!" I never saw that nurse again. But I respected my Ob/Gyn even more.
    via u/Silli_Filli
  • 09
    zerbey Things started going missing from people's desks, the culprit remained elusive until one day he showed his "brand new iPod!" to another coworker. On the back, it was engraved with the name of a different coworker who had
    via u/zerbey
  • 10
    just had his brand new iPod stolen. Managers were summoned, he was gone within minutes and so were all the unsolved thefts.
    via u/zerbey
  • 11

    Bro burnt his life to the ground in record time

    C... Oh, i remember another one. We sent a couple of sales reps on a work trip. One married man (we'll call him. Bill Smith), one woman who was not his wife. The submitted expense reports and it was apparent that they had shared a room for the duration. It was confirmed they were having an affair on the company dime. I'm not sure who was
    via u/cwthree
  • 12
    fired and who quit, but they were both gone by the time I was hired to work the phones. Not long after I started, I got a call from a woman asking for Bill Smith. I explained that we didn't have a Bill Smith on my list of employees, and the woman said, "Oh yes, you do, I'm his wife and he's a vice president there." I put her on hold and asked around, and
    via u/cwthree
  • 13
    was told that Bill used to work there, but no longer did. I had to explain to this woman that Bill truly no longer worked there. She was not, in an way, shape, or form, pleased to hear this, and I'm not entirely sure she believed me anyway.
    via u/cwthree
  • 14
    My coworkers were delighted to fill me in on the gory details later. IIRC, one on the senior staff agreed to call Bill's wife (ex-wife, maybe) and handle things.
    via u/cwthree
  • 15
    im-buster My wife's company has a booth at CES in Vegas every year. I went with her one year. We are going up to our room from the casino and there is one of the guys she works with sprawled out dr_nk halfway in the elevator. Couple of his
    via u/im-buster
  • 16
    buddies are trying to get him up. I heard him say 'Oh sh, Don't tell Phil' (The owner of the company). Phil was standing right next to me.
    via u/im-buster
  • 17
    sanityfordummy Years ago I worked with a woman who applied for a smallish loan at some point. I don't remember what it was for, but definitely something specific. She ended up being approved for $5,000 and told me the news like she had won the lottery. She then pulled a no-show the following day and never
    via u/sanityfordummy
  • 18
    came back. This was a preschool, so that complicated things a bit for the week, but we managed to make it work until someone could fill permanently. I remember the director commenting that what she did was so stupid, and he'd never re-hire her again (no sh, Derek? Glad to hear it, keep up those standards).
    via u/sanityfordummy
  • 19
    Anyway, about a year later I ran into her at Walmart where she was refolding some shirts or something. We only briefly caught up, but she did mention with wide, shocked eyes that the school wouldn't hire her back when she came looking for work again. Shockingly, it had not taken her long to blow through her...winnings.
    via u/sanityfordummy
  • 20
    Tsmith5619 A new hire told the manager either the long-time employee gets fired or he's gone. He's gone.
    via u/Tsmith5619
  • 21
    Shewhomust77 Our chief of security was caught stealing patients' valuables from the safe. Escorted out in handcuffs.
    via u/Shewhomust77
  • 22
    easy10pins Taking selfies and posting them to social media in a facility where photography is strictly prohibited. Dude took a selfie in front of some proprietary gear and posted it to his IG. Within 30 minutes he was escorted out of the facility.
    via u/easy10pins
  • 23
    Keefer1970 I worked in a KMart store years ago that was being renovated. Our store manager was caught putting some boxes of floor tiles and buckets of paint in his car, to use at his own house. We had a new manager the next morning.
    via u/Keefer1970
  • 24
    JerrysKid714 A guy I knew got fired for being late too much. Union tried to get his job back at arbitration, he was late for that also.
    via u/JerrysKid714
  • 25
    Cheezburger Image 10523962112
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

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

  • 26
    1beautifulhuman When I worked as a mortgage loan processor, I discovered that the loan officer was falsifying documents in order to get a fraudulent mortgage approved. I worked with the manager to re-verify all the documentation as well as documenting how and why the documents he provided were fraudulent. He was
    via u/1beautifulhuman
  • 27
    called into the manager's office and confronted, where upon he ran away. Literally just got up and ran and got his car and left.
    via u/1beautifulhuman
  • 28
    ChicagoDash Guy went on an expensive personal trip to a tropical island and charged the entire thing to his corporate AMEX, then claimed it was stolen and the charges weren't his. Nevermind that the hotel and airline tickets were clearly in his name.
    via u/ChicagoDash
  • 29
    W... Guy was a temp, had been there a while. The company had an unofficial policy to make any temp, permanent (if they wanted it) after 18 months or so. As there was no other way to get a perm job there, this was highly desirable, lots of benefits and better pay included with job security.
    via u/worldworn
  • 30
    The week after being made permanent, he completely stopped trying, started turning up late, refused to do anything he deemed as "not his job". Was given a fair amount of warning, including "we will fire you if you keep this up". Yet, he thought he was bullet proof, they sacked him a week or so later.
    via u/worldworn
  • 31
    retrofiable Nurse accessed health records of their neighbor with whom they were having a property dispute... and the neighbour found out because the nurse THREATENED TO SHARE THE INFO WITH THEIR OTHER NEIGHBORS. Congratulations, insta-fired and sued.
    via u/retrofiable
  • 32
    Development_Ma... We worked at a satellite media company. Guy in customer support was so impressed with the speed of our customers network that he seeded public torrents ON THEIR NETWORK over the weekend. The customer was a tv/radio conglomerate lol
    via u/Development_Material
  • 33
    wayfaringrunner Used to work for a premier tech retailer. Coworker who was a notorious "scrounger" took a fellow employee's nice sunglasses from his locker in the break room. The fellow employee as asking around for days if anyone had seen his lost sunglasses.
    via u/wayfaringrunner
  • 34
    Then the scrounger wore them back into work a few days later. Instant confrontation and firing.
    via u/wayfaringrunner
  • 35
    Wretched Wren A medical lab technician who also had a side job working as a courier for the company serving the lab. Had my job before me. Got fired from both jobs when bits of her lunch (during a courier shift) was found inside the sample bags she was delivering. Basically
    via u/Wretched Wren
  • 36
    inside 2 of the 3 layers of sealing, only way it could happen was she was messing around with them while on her lunch break, which also meant she didn't have them in the transportation coolers either.
    via u/Wretched Wren
  • 37
    Lloytron One company I worked at sponsored a major football team. One day we were offered a free raffle for some free seats. An email went out to the whole company telling us how to enter.
    via u/Lloytron
  • 38
    A relatively new starter did a reply all, saying "I bet those marketing wankers keep this for themselves" He didn't last to the end of the day.
    via u/Lloytron
  • 39
    KreatorOfReddit I was IT in a collections call center.... New agent takes call.... Person says they need to call back later to make the payment. You don't get credit unless you actually take the payment. New agent pulls out his debit card and puts the payment in for them scheduled for the next day so he can get credit when they call back to provide the
    via u/KreatorOfReddit
  • 40
    "correct" card info. He also made sure to let his manager know so when they called back they would know what was happening. He was a giant pain during the onboarding process... we felt like he was setting us up for something. (Long story, just very demanding and adamant for accommodations on things). Turns out he was just a 50 year old moron.
    via u/KreatorOfReddit
  • 41
    He lasted 3 days out of training.
    via u/KreatorOfReddit
  • 42
    shan-ella Guy at my old job called in sick... then went live on Instagram from a pool party. With our manager's niece. He was tagged in the video. The next shift he showed up like nothing happened - got walked out before he could clock in.
    via u/shan-ella
  • 43
    Going NutCracken Our team worked Sat, Sun, & Mon, 12 hour shift. Had a girl who constantly called in on Sat with the excuse her kid was sick. One Sun she showed up (after calling in the day before) wearing the t-shirt from a concert she went to Fri night. As she's walked out I heard her tell the supervisor "I can't believe you're firing a single mother with a sick child."
    via u/GoingNutCracken
  • 44
    cwthree This is from back when cell phones were rare, the world still ran on land lines, and daytime calls outside your city were hella expensive. My company had a system that logged phone calls for accounting purposes. Guy came in on a weekend with a friend, disconnected the printer that logged outgoing phone calls, and
    via u/cwthree
  • 45
    made a bunch of very expensive long-distance calls. I don't recall how he got caught - either the logging system had cached the data and dumped it to the printer when it was reconnected or someone saw the call history when the bill came in the mail. Either way, they figured out who was responsible, because he was exactly the kind of who would do something like that.
    via u/cwthree
  • 46
    He was swiftly canned, but he maintained contact long enough to write a poem about the perceived injustice of the whole affair and to display said poem in the break room.
    via u/cwthree
  • 47

    Some satisfying revenge!

    Laserdollarz Day 1, made a phone call in the break room, about the place, in Spanish. Manager is from Mexico, so he fired her in Spanish.
    via u/Laserdollarz
  • 48
    ceeroSVK I used to work in this call center yeeaaaaars ago. The supervisor was a young, super chill intelligent dude whom everyone loved. One day, he was fired on the spot, left within like 10 min and noone heard of him again.
    via u/ceeroSVK
  • 49
    It turned out that he asked one of the coworkers who he was friends with to borrow like, 20 bucks. She was dumb enough to give him her credit card and her pin and told him to go to the atm. Couple minutes later, she got a notification from the bank that a couple 100s were withdrawn. She
    via u/ceeroSVK
  • 50
    freaked out, reported him to his boss, who got furious and fired him right away. Turned out that the guy had a serious online gambling problem and owed tons of money everywhere and this was the last straw
    via u/ceeroSVK
  • 51
    YELLOW_TOAD An auto service technician employee decided to take a customer's $500,000+ sports car for a quick joyride after he completed his work on it. It was a simple interior repair, and did not require a test drive afterward. Our STRICT policy was to park cars like this in a special designated area for high-end vehicles. But
    via u/YELLOW_TOAD
  • 52
    no......He decided to take it "around the block" real quick. After hammering it out of an intersection, he lost control and collided with a large tree. He totalled it. He was ok, but he was terminated. Quickly.
    via u/YELLOW_TOAD
  • 53
    MilesTheGoodKing I worked at a Verizon corporate location for a while. Not a lot of people might think this, but the amount of information at reps fingers is startling. Because of that, we had to take strict ethics courses routinely. Those classes included "don't look up info you don't have to look up" and "don't look for celebrity or political figures numbers
    via u/MilesTheGoodKing
  • 54
    or addresses". Makes sense. One employee looked up and (allegedly) succeeded in finding Barack Obama's personal phone number. Our system logged every single thing that reps did, so before the guy could log out of the tablet, our manager got a call and the employee was instantly walked. It was a very big deal.
    via u/MilesTheGoodKing
  • 55
    Ilsluggo Working in an airline call centre many years ago. The airline had a (since discontinued) recognition program that was aimed at rewarding secretaries, PA's, etc - the people who actually did much of the booking of flights back in the day. Well one night, a Flying Orchid was on the phone with an agent and things between them got
    via u/Ilsluggo
  • 56
    heated. The caller must have tried to throw their status as a Flying Orchid around because the next thing we heard was the agent loudly announcing, "Listen lady, I don't care if you're a flying squirrel, the answer is no". It was the last phone call the agent would ever take.
    via u/Ilsluggo
  • 57
    hospitalbedside we had a manager that hit on one of his female subordinates on his work phone, and when she reported him he got investigated and fired
    via u/hospitalbedside
  • 58
    Cheezburger Image 10523987200
    via Magnet.me on Unsplash+

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

  • 59
    3141592653589... When I was managing a retail chain everyone thought I was too soft. No. one realized I was the one who pulled the trigger on the one guy who got fired during my tenure there. He was being paid extra to manage our socials, but decided to spend company time and company resources on creating his
    via u/314159265358979326
  • 60
    own YouTube channel. A customer pointed his channel out to me. I checked it out, and among the videos there was a fantastic video with a ton of views... that revealed a trade secret, I'm sure accidentally. If it was on our channel it wouldn't have been a problem. Accidents happen. Take it down and re-edit it.
    via u/314159265358979326
  • 61
    But it was disloyal and accidentally revealed a trade secret. Between the two, he was instantly done.
    via u/314159265358979326
  • 62
    andieee919 new hire (line cook) showed up late not once, but twice, in front of her manager's face. not only that, but she was unorganized and unprepared in the line, slow and messy. wasn't able to finish her tasks on time. it was me. its totally fair though.
    via u/andieee919

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