'He left with over $4,000 from the cash register': 10+ Managers share the most memorable employees they had to fire

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Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Jul 28, 2025 4:00 PM EDT

Employees may never forget their worst bosses, but as it turns out, bosses never forget their worst employees either. Any time a professional dynamic goes south, there will always be leftover resentment. 

A friend of mine has a coworker who needed to let go of an underperforming employee. This is someone who was seemingly always on vacation and always behind on their weekly tasks and responsibilities. It got to the point where firing this person was inevitable. Well, not only did the employee not take it well, but they ended up becoming a LinkedIn influencer by divulging details of her "improper treatment" at the company. Again, as someone who regularly covers stories where employees are mistreated by their bosses, I must reiterate that this was not one of those cases. This former employee ended up having to take down nearly 50% of their online posts as they revealed too much identifying information about the people with whom they used to work. In the end, justice was served… sort of.

Keep scrolling below for this collection of stories in which managers had to fire some pretty incompetent and unprofessional employees!

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    Cheezburger Image 10534550784
    via Unsplash+ (Getty Images)

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

  • Regardless of one's line of work, it turns out that there will always be folks who shirk their responsibilities, and there will always be employees who go out of their way to make their working environment difficult for all involved. Some managers out there are decent and may not want to rock the boat, but even those managers need to put their feet down at a certain point.

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    OmegaChadAlphaMale. Guy was just hired, he asked to go home on his second day because he his pants. Alright, happens, a little tmi but what can you do? He must be an honest soul.
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    Went home for the afternoon, came in on the third day his pants again and asked to go home. There was no fourth day.
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    p38-lightning. Dumbest, maybe not the worse: A mechanic in my chemical plant wrapped expensive copper tubing around his chest and put his coat over it. It was a really cold day and it started drawing up to where he couldn't breathe -
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    just as he got to the guard gate. The guards had a good laugh unwinding the soon-to-be-unemployed mechanic.
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    unflappedyedi · I was a newly hired manager at McDonald's. The guy before me was working the cash register. This store was very highly trafficked, it was right off of the interstate right on the border of city and middle of nowhere. It was the first place to stop and get some
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    food for travelers coming in, and the last place to stop and get some food for travelers leaving out.
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    It was not uncommon to have over 1,000$ in under an hour in the cash register and policy was to "drop" money in the safe at least once every hour. So this new guy comes in, works
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    for a few hours, but the manager never did the drops. After about 4 hours, the employee goes to the bathroom and disappears.
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    Turns out he left with over 4,000$ from the cash register. Police were called because obviously they have the guys ID, address, and information on file.
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    Only to find out that everything was false. He stole someones ID and social that looked similar to him and used a fake address. I don't think the police ever found him or figured out who he was.
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    [deleted]. First job in insurance, weird guy wanted to be in SIU, the team that investigates fraud. He got it in his head that, rather than investigating external fraud as part of the claims department,
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    they were a kind of clandestine CIA operation who were listening in on our phone calls and you could get tapped to join if you were smart enough and hard working enough.
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    He was fired for sleeping at his desk repeatedly.
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    TAC1313 Removing the high limit switch on a dryer causing the clothes to catch on fire. Twice.
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    asking_hyena blew up 45 000$ worth of equipment through shoddy electrical work he had been already trained for.
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    To be fair, this one's also on us management, we probably shouldn't have let him have a go at even this simple electrical work considering how unreliable he had shown himself to be thus far.
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    jimmyb1982. I'm not a manager but an employee of an airport cargo handling company. We had a guy, crash a brand new jet engine airstart unit into a jet engine. Bosses were not happy.
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    Nuttonbutton. Literally just shoveled money out of the cash register into his pockets with 3 separate cameras looking at him. He took several thousand dollars.
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    baltinerdist. I read that as dumbest instead of worst and started typing this, so I'll finish it out anyway. I managed a call center for a while. One of my staff was a 23 year old guy who just could not figure out how to get to work on time. He had
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    his own car and only lived like 15-20 minutes away, but he would be perpetually up to a half hour late shift after shift.
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    We had a generous tardiness/absence policy - three strikes for unexcused absences but an unexcused tardy was only half a strike - and we were even nice enough to give him just a verbal warning at least. two or three times
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    instead of starting to count them because the call center wasn't one that had like an inbound
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    call service level, it was just outbound calls so the time you lost hurt you in other metrics and k lled your chance at getting bonuses, but soon enough he had burned through five of the six unexcused tardiness he was allowed.
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    The last time he was tardy, I brought him into my office and told him this was his final written warning. If he was even a minute late clocking in without a legitimate excuse for the next 90 days, he would be terminated on the spot. That was on a Tuesday.
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    On Wednesday, he was scheduled to arrive at 4:00 PM for an evening shift. He walks in at 4:25 PM holding a Starbucks cup in his hand. "I couldn't help it, the drive thru took forever!"
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    I took his badge and walked him out. I hope he learned from it.
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    Cheezburger Image 10534551040
    via Unsplash+ (Getty Images)

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

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    Difficult_Image_4552. Supposed to drive a car from one city to another on a Friday. Probably 2 hour trip? Took it to Mexico and partied for a weekend and delivered the car on Monday. This was not even a border state.
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    bigfatfish 5000 · Not a manager but a carpenter with sevral employees but I had a worker doing a window. replacement I'm a person's home. The room he was working in had a fully stocked bar.
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    Employee drank a 400$ bottle of liquor and homeowner found him passed out in their guest room
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    SpeakerCareless. I had a coworker get fired for applying for jobs on a jobs site using her company computer at work. After she'd been warned about appropriate internet use
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    and that she was being monitored. Had a different coworker fired for looking at at work on a work computer, also after being warned about appropriate internet use.
    via TeddyBabyyy
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    I had an employee who was the absolute r and most incompetent but he made it easy by just calling in sick for 2 weeks straight and refusing to provide a dr. Note.
    via TeddyBabyyy

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getting fired workplace-stories fired work stories toxic-workplace manager job fired story work employees toxic-work-environment
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