15+ Employers who fired workers who really deserved it: 'I got to fire an entire company'

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Oct 4, 2025 5:00 PM EDT

Firing an employee who's been getting on your last nerve must be a great feeling. Although there are plenty of bad bosses out there, some of them are just good, well-meaning people trying to manage a team of workers. Some of these workers show up each day, prepared for their shifts, and ready to give 110%. Others show up 75% of the time, forget half their uniform, and spend all day trying to get out of work. 

Behavior like this on repeat can really stress a manager out. After all, if you're making the weekly schedule and you're dreading adding that one employee on because you know they won't show up, it just makes everyone's lives harder. That boss knows that their other employees will have to shoulder the burden of that person when they inevitably waltz in to work 2 hours late. Or if they do show up, they're super grouchy about it. So now, that manager has to calm down all the customers who encounter said employee… Some workers are just asking for trouble, and if no other methods work, they've got to be let go. 

Now, as you can read about below, there are some workers who were just begging to be fired! There are a bunch of great stories from people who have had that same experience of watching an employee fail harder and harder until one day, management has had enough. 

Next up, read this satisfying tale of a 25-year-old construction worker who cost her company $20,000 after her older boss refused to listen to her: "I'm telling him no… I was perfectly within my right to do so." 

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  • 01

    'Employers... what was the most satisfying, "You're fired", you ever uttered?'

    C [deleted] Forklift driver took out a ceiling-mounted furnace on his second day, by ignoring his training, experience, and common sense. It wasn't a tough decision.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 02
    farang I fired a guy by telling him he was obviously too skilled to work under me and should be running a kitchen by himeself. He found a new job and thanked me.
    via u/farang
  • 03
    ellipses1 I was supervising a call center in the early 2000's and we were still manually dialing numbers off of paper call sheets. Had a new guy who hadn't converted a call yet after a few days (we did surveys) so I listen in to see how his introductions sound. First call- answering machine. Second call- "Hello?" "I know where you live, p! B!"
    via u/ellipses1
  • 04
    Of all the hundreds of calls this kid made, I catch that one on the second try. Holy jeez... I called him in the office and was like "Dude, you can't work here any more." "Why not? Because I didn't get any surveys?" "No... because you said 'I know where you live p b." The look in his eye said it all. He left calmly and without incident.
    via u/ellipses1
  • 05
    bpmhigh Young person very pleased with himself. Went to the best schools, universities, well looked after by mum and dad. Chose him from a large and strong field of economics graduates. 1st week in the job he made a point of taunting and boasting to his ex- employer about his new job (1st warning sign). After 6 months he was a nightmare of self- absorption. Quality of his work was very poor and any menial task was groaned at. Got into the unfortunate habit of surreptitiously denigrating the peop
    via u/bpmhigh
  • 06
    circulate or print these emails internally which when found (often) were collected and filed by my assistant. I particularly enjoyed the one to his interstate mates about how much of an a I was, how much I was being paid and that I drove around loving myself in my Porsche. (I actually drove a 1978 Toyota Corolla!). On the anniversary of his much anticipated pay review (and the eve of his fancy overseas trip) I kept him back late and called him into my office and calmly handed over the emails and
    via u/bpmhigh
  • 07
    JonnyBravoII I never micro manage my employees and I always gave them a lot of discretion in how they did their jobs. So I get a new contract-to-hire guy but he seems to be gone from his desk way too much. After a few days of this, I use my admin credentials to log onto his computer to see what he's working on. Bottom line, there's an email to a girl where he tells her that he parks his car in the basement away from everyone and he goes there to nap.
    via u/JonnyBravoII
  • 08
    I find him in the basement sleeping in his car, tap on the glass and just ask for his door key card. The look on his face was like a little boy. He knew he was totally busted. Edit: There is a lot of conjecture on this one so let me clear up some things. • Where we were located, there was no privacy expectation law. I was free to examine his computer. • He was not an employee but was an hourly contractor. By sleeping in the car, he was most certainly being paid for not working.
    via u/JonnyBravoII
  • 09
    AO PILAO PILAO PILAO PILAO LAO PILÃO PILAO PILAO PILÃO BRAZIL EAD rato fino FLOCAD LOCAL
    via Nielson Caetano-Salmeron on Unsplash+

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

  • 10
    fiffle44 I once hired this guy who was just absolutely sure he always was the smartest guy in every room. But he was quite stupid, and thought he was slick, but I needed employees in this yogurt shop I ran, so I kept him on, but only when I worked there (it was my business). Once, all of his friends came in after one of his shifts with totally full punch cards (which of course he supplied), so I had to give them whatever they wanted. But finally, once this guy was on staff, and I had to go out,
    via u/fiffle44
  • 11
    hour, but the register had been opened over a dozen times. Clearly theft. So I sat him down, and as he thought he was such a super smart guy with the brightest of futures, I told him, Well, I think it's time I make you Vice President. You should have seen his eyes light up. Yep, you're VP of garbage collection, now go change all the garbage and pick up all the refuse in the parking lot. Oh, and I'm only going to need you for an hour a week at the most. The look of confusion on his face was quite
    via u/fiffle44
  • 12
    [deleted] Used to work for a beverage company. Some of our printing was done in Mexico. Sent final press files to the printer on a paperboard glass bottle carrier (what six packs of bottled beer come in). Instead of using the final files (which cost thousands of dollars to produce), the printer used the PDF MOCK UP file with all the di lines, cut lines, fold lines, etc on it. They printed over a MILLION of these. That was the day I got to fire an entire company.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 13
    [deleted] Caught an employee falsifying their timecard by overbilling a client. I covered for them the first time and told them not to do it again. They ignored me and did it again, this time overbilling them by even more. Not only did I fire them, they were arrested for financial fraud.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 14
    Bridgette Bane Had a temp no-show 4 times in 6 weeks. I emphasize every day that all they have to do is call a 24/7 line within 2 hours of their showup time and it's all good, though really if they call us with even the thinnest of excuses we usually let it slide. The official policy was 2 and you're done but we gave this guy slack because he usually accepted any job we had, no matter how s ty. But this was way out of line, the last straws were that he no- showed twice in one week and then didn'
    via u/Bridgette Bane
  • 15
    that, he is no longer worth the trouble. So then he strolls in and acts like nothing ever happened and starts signing in as available. I just looked at him and said "You might as well just turn around and walk out that door, you were fired two weeks ago."
    via u/Bridgette Bane
  • 16
    goodie2004 One more story, again not the employer. The setting is a low budget horror movie, I spent pre-production volunteering in the art department in the hope of getting my first job. Others came and went. Day one of shooting, another guy joined the department, getting in because his dad was dating the producer. I didn't particularly like him but I worked with him. He was very loud and opinionated and forever saying how he thought things should be done. I knew about his connection to the pro
    via u/goodie2004
  • 17
    Two weeks into shooting, one of the department heads comes to me and asks what I think of him. I wonder what he's been saying about me and say that we get along fine. A few days later, same department head comes back to me, this is after the guy has been mouthing off about the visual effects on the movie and what he thinks we should have done instead. I again say that we're fine and the department head looks at me sceptically. "Because I think he treats you like a fing idiot" he says, and walks
    via u/goodie2004
  • 18
    Apparently this guy had alienated the first assistant director, the third assistant director, the stand-by props guy, was loathed by the visual effects guy and the two art department heads were cheerfully taking the p out of him at every opportunity. Monday rolled around and there was no sign of him on set. Apparently he'd been transferred to "viral marketing" about the film. tl;dr Know your place on a film set.
    via u/goodie2004
  • 19
    ZarquonsFlatTire I wasn't the boss, but working at a nursery selling Christmas trees we had seasonal who would openly demand tips from customers. Tips are great, we love tips. But we made a decent hourly wage and you JUST DON'T DO THAT. Made us all look bad and we were glad when he was gone.
    via u/ZarquonsFlatTire
  • 20
    eatarock9 I work for a temporary staffing agency. Two employees of mine were on a shift waitressing for a large banquet. The next day I called them into my office after an incident was reported on their shift. I promptly fired them after it became clear that they had gotten into a screaming fist fight in front of their customers because they both tried to walk through a door at the same time.
    via u/eatarock9
  • 21
    [deleted] We had a software developer intern at my last company that we had to fire. He was with us as part of a co-op program (full-time, semester-long, paid internships), and for the first 4 of his 5 months, he was doing okay work. Not stellar, but certainly above-average. For his last month, we decided to give him a project of his own to work on for our new software. It was pretty simple, just a plugin that could get E- mails from POP3/IMAP and parse them for information for our database. A w
    via u/[deleted]
  • 22
    his little brothers. He'd come to work pretty much every other day, and the days he came in, he was super late, sometimes not getting in until after noon. This became ritual, and we started to get concerned, so we asked him to make a better effort to come into the office on time. Over the course of his project, we always asked if he had any questions about what he was doing, he always took notes when we discussed something, and he seemed to know what we wanted. We figured he was getting along ju
    via u/[deleted]
  • 23
    At the end of his co-op, we decided we'd do a code review of the stuff he had written for his plugin. We set up the projector in the conference room, had him bring his laptop, etc. When we were all ready, he plugged his laptop into the projector and showed us his code... It was one class, 80 lines long, copied from a tutorial on the Internet. The room was silent. All the code did was fetch E- mails and print them to the screen. It didn't do anything we wanted it to, despite our best efforts to m
    via u/[deleted]
  • 24
    My boss and I had the other developers leave the room. We asked him why he didn't have more code. He didn't have answers. He just stared at his feet and shrugged. Since it was the last day of his internship, we couldn't fire him per se, but we told him we weren't bringing him back in the fall, and that he was clocking out early. He cried as he left. Honestly, it was one of the worst feelings in my life. Firing someone is hard. We wasted over $2,000 on him that month for literally nothing, and th
    via u/[deleted]
  • 25
    emotions. Really, we were just disappointed in him. We thought he could be responsible, but he let us down. Sure, there are people in this thread that are going to talk about their C head employees, their we pon-wielding co-workers, the drama queens and drama kings that didn't get their way, etc., but when it comes to firing someone, there is nothing satisfying about it. If you found it satisfying, good for you, I just won't think you're a good person. It was one of the hardest things I've ever
    via u/[deleted]
  • 26
    CopKnock I managed a 4 screen cinema in a pretty rich town for a few years. I had one employee named Shane who was someone I hired just because I wanted to give him a chance and knew he wouldn't get it elsewhere. At one point I started to notice a pattern that people would loose value items in the auditorium and they would never be recovered even after looking myself. It really started to make sense when it would only happen on Shane's shifts. One Saturday afternoon I decided to put my theory to
    via u/CopKnock
  • 27
    photo copied each one. I also wrote a message on the $20 at the bottom so I knew it was mine. I then put the money, some business cards, and other useless things into the wallet. A movie gets out and had about 50 or so people in it and as soon as the last person is out I threw the wallet into the middle of the auditorium. I tell Shane and another employee(who was extremely honest and timid) to clean the theater. Ten minutes later they both emerge and the kid who was cleaning with Shane comes to
    via u/CopKnock
  • 28
    opened it up and the money was missing. I then went into the office with my assistant manager and told him that someone took the money. I call both kids into the office and explain to them that something went missing and to empty the contents of their pockets onto the desk. The honest kid only had a pen, his cell phone, and a schedule so I sent him back out. Shane starts getting nervous and is asking why we are doing this. I told him if he had nothing to hide just show us and that would be the e
    via u/CopKnock
  • 29
    his dad gave that to him before work. I then told him to flip the $20 over and read it. I wrote "you are fired" showed him the photo copies and told him to turn in his uniform and punch out as he was going home. He was in shock that he finally got caught. Later that night his dad came to the cinema and wanted to talk to me. I show him the security footage and the photo copies. His dad left and probably went home to punish him. It was pretty epic.
    via u/CopKnock
  • 30
    glittergrenade The only time I have ever fired someone was when I was young and working a summer job. One of the employees was in a junior role to me, and I was his supervisor. He was a nice kid and a good worker, but his mother was extremely overbearing and would often call me after work to complain about things I said or did throughout the day, i.e. "Bob wasn't very happy this morning when you told him off for being late", or "Bob thought it was okay to take a longer lunch break if he didn't t
    via u/glittergrenade
  • 31
    Man in gray turtleneck ang glasses sits with folded hands and stern expression with chalkboard wall in the background
    via Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash+

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

  • 32
    but after work, his mother would phone up and run through me, criticizing my training, how I dealt with the other employees, and my ability to do my job. In the end I rung her one evening and told her that Bob wasn't required in the next day. She asked me if I wanted to talk to Bob himself about it and I said no, as she'd handled all his business up to this point I'm sure she wouldn't mind letting him know about this.
    via u/glittergrenade
  • 33
    fixitstevens As the manager of a movie theater, I have security cameras on key areas of the business. I had one employee who would straight up argue with me about anything I asked him to do or roll his eyes when asked to do something. I had to have just cause to fire him. One day, I asked him to do something and went back to the office, my assistant manager was watching the camera and as I turned my back, he flipped me off. My assistant manager let me know what happened, I cued up the camera sys
    via u/fixitstevens
  • 34
    throwthisaway1234321. I had a contractor, not an employee but close enough. He was helping me fix up a house and he wasn't really doing it right (quality to low for what I had in mind) but he was trying real hard and had a hard luck story. At first it was great as he was working hard and I paid him at the end of the week. Then for some reason he started working less and less - I think he just got bored by the work, not sure why the drop off in quality and time. I was only around 3 days out of 5
    via u/throwthisaway1234321
  • 35
    was far inferior - I suspect he was only coming in for half days. So, I said money was tight so he could only work the 3 days I was there. I though he might read between the lines and realize I was onto his increasing laziness and work hard those 3 days....it didn't happen. For various reasons we worked very different hours, him working 9am to 5pm and me from noon to about 10 pm. He started just coming in around 11:30 (I'm guessing) and sitting in his car until I got there. When I arrived he jum
    via u/throwthisaway1234321
  • 36
    Plant shop employee scans white flower bunch while customer in beige shirt looks toward her with numerous plants in the background
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

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

  • 37
    it hard to believe he'd just gotten back from lunch 3 work days in a row and, of course, very little work was done when I got there. Finally I said due to really tight money he could only come in the actual hours I was there as his work when I was physically there was still sorta ok. The very next work day he is there when I arrive (does the just got back from lunch thing with the fast food soda) says he knows what I said but got there the usual time anyhow and can I pay him the full day and giv
    via u/throwthisaway1234321
  • 38
    says he has to pick up his son from school but he'll be right back. Comes back half an hour later with his son (like 5 years old and cute as a button but he isn't getting any work done with his son there). He says now he has to watch his son and can't work anymore today but can I pay him for a full days work and he'll come back a day I'm not there and work a few more hours. I pay him for the day up to that point and say money is really, really tight and I can't use his services anymore. He start
    via u/throwthisaway1234321
  • 39
    when he actually only had worked 20 minutes - what did he really expect). Hated to fire him since he, at first, had worked really hard. He also had a son and some other children and some obvious bad money problems. He was also a really lousy worker and I just couldn't keep paying him for doing nothing. It was a satisfying "you're fired" but felt bad anyhow. By the way, I never said "you're fired" just "money is tight I can't use your services" but even this dummy knew what it meant.
    via u/[throwthisaway1234321

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