15 Managers who fired employees for making huge mistakes: 'We know what you've been stealing!'

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Nov 6, 2025 5:00 PM EST

Some firings come out of nowhere, but for a lot of employees, they know exactly why they were fired, and they don't regret a single thing they did. 

In the retail field, hirings and firings are daily occurances. Just ask one retail manager who shared a story: they write that every holiday season, there's an influx of fresh employees. Every year, this manager warns them that they'll be tempted to steal gift cards from oblivious customers. But, the manager warns, they should certainly not do that. They will get caught, and they will get fired. Guess what the employees do anyway? Exactly, they swipe a card or 3 when customers aren't looking, and then the manager has to have a conversation with them explaining why they won't be getting put on the schedule any more. 

Another guy who should've known better was the call center worker who liked to mute calls with bad customers and insult them while they couldn't hear him. It's too bad that he forgot to hit the mute button one day, and ended up startling an old woman with his foul language! She hung up, called back, demanded to speak to a manager, and ratted him out. I guess that call center rep didn't know that calls are recorded for quality assurance (a phrase we've all heard a million times!) because that call was recorded, and then played aloud for him to hear. Whoops! Onto the next job!

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  • 01

    'Managers of Reddit, what is the stupidest thing an employee did that forced you to fire them?'

    Two women sit at desk behind laptops while wearing suit jackets and look at each other with concerned expression
    via Resume Genius on Unsplash+

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

  • 02
    pawvel_catsyuk Forging a tip on a receipt. Like adding $20 wasn't going to get caught.
    via u/pawvel_catsyuk
  • 03
    NJtoTheBay Not a manager but someone was recently fired from my job for something so stupid it probably inspired a few dozen face palms. I work at a retail store of a very well known technology company. Customers very often trade in their old smartphones for a credit when they buy a new one. Protocol is to erase the old phone in the customers presence. One
    via u/NJtoTheBay
  • 04
    employee didn't erase the phone, went through the camera roll, found some pictures he liked (the customer was female) and emailed them, to himself, using the customers email account that was logged into the phone. The customer found the emails in her sent box and complained to mgmt. He was several levels of fired.
    via u/NJtoTheBay
  • 05
    pratorian I had an assistant manager who would short the till every single day $3.64, it was always the same amount and we could never prove it was him... even though it clearly lined up with only his shifts. Day or night. Until one day he came back from lunch at Taco Bell in our parking lot, and my other assistant saw his lunch and thought to herself "that
    via u/pratorian
  • 06
    looks good!" And walked across the street on her break and ordered the same thing. Her total? $3.64! She immediately came back and told me, I pulled all the drawers and sure enough one was short that exact amount!
    via u/pratorian
  • 07
    The kicker... when he was sat down by our DM to be terminated all they told him was "we know what you've been stealing!" And his response was "oh! You finally figured out I was stealing all those Skechers Shape-Ups?!" (for those that don't remember... those shoes were $130 a pair!).
    via u/pratorian
  • 08
    lestermason Every year during the holiday season, I'd warn the new hires, "listen, no matter how tempting it is, don't steal a customer's gift card. We can track it, I will track it and if I catch you, you will get fired. Every year people try it, every year people get fired. Don't do it." They do it anyway.
    via u/lestermason
  • 09
    MachineGunTeacher New guy, around 20 yrs old or so, called in sick saying he thinks he had a stroke. Since he lived across the street from the store where we worked, we all then stood and watched through the store's glass door as he packed up his truck with beach gear and drove off with his girlfriend. Fired the next day.
    via u/MachineGunTeacher
  • 10
    beeps-n-boops Girl decides to start stealing some of our products from the warehouse and sell them on eBay... as brand-new, with factory warranty. It only took a couple of weeks before we started getting calls for tech support for products with serial numbers we did not have registered as "sold" in the system. Brief investigation leads straight to her.
    via u/beeps-n-boops
  • 11
    She is fired (of course), and legal action pursued, but the sad angle to the story is that her father worked there too, and we were forced to make him stay at home with no pay until it could be determined beyond any doubt that he wasn't involved.
    via u/beeps-n-boops
  • 12
    [deleted] Offered a job to a candidate, but had to step out of the office to grab some paperwork. Came back and a bus pass that was on the desk was missing. Newly hired employee stole it. I asked him to return it because a previous candidate dropped it and he said he needed it more than they did and walked out.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 13
    Lik... One of my employee's broke into my locked office with a customer, and went through the cabinet with all of the employee files. Said files contained contracts, personal info (like SSNs), and a picture of the employee in uniform for our records.
    via u/LikeASewingMachine
  • 14
    when I went through the footage (w/audio) to find out why my office was unlocked. I heard him talking to the female customer about how one of our other employees was a great guy and she should totally hook up with him.
    via u/LikeASewingMachine
  • 15
    The reason he broke into the cabinet with all of the sensitive info was to find the employee pictures, because the guy wasn't on Facebook, and the female customer wanted to see what he looked like before she made a decision about fucking him.
    via u/LikeASewingMachine
  • 16
    racord360 I had an employee lock another employee in a closet one time. The person that was trapped called the police from inside the closet. It was quite an HR nightmare.
    via u/racord360
  • 17
    Zeke219 Had a server drink out of the customer's Dr. Pepper and Coke to see which was which....in front of them...
    via u/Zeke219
  • 18
    Elim_Tain He stole a bunch of bananas. Seriously. It was a college dining hall. He was an employee of the dining hall, and got free meals while on-shift. He was not working that day, walked into the serving area, hid a bunch of bananas in his bag, and tried to pass the cashier only paying for what was on
    via u/Elim_Tain
  • 19
    his tray. When confronted and asked if he "had forgotten anything, maybe in his bag?" He denied having anything else. Fired on the spot. The worst part, he was on a meal plan (a kind of debit system, except you never get the money back at the end of the semester if you don't spend it). He had plenty of money for the semester. I have no idea why he felt the need to steal bananas.
    via u/Elim_Tain
  • 20
    [de... Back in my days working at a used car dealership, we had a teen come in and test drive a 1,500 (mile) Corvette, todays equivalent would be the ZR1. Anyway, the kid drives it around our set loop once, and is being a little waffley on if he wants to get it or not, he says it doesn't really
    via u/[deleted]
  • 21
    drive as well as he thought it would. My salesman told him it was user error, and he'd prove it to him, they went out for another loop around, with the employee driving it.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 22
    He managed to get pulled over doing 135 (MPH) in a school zone, got arrested if I recall correctly. Needless to say, he was not welcome back at our store, however the teen did buy the car.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 23
    Shall-Not-Pass We put a girl a final warning and told her explicitly that ANY infraction would lead to her termination. Next shift we pass by and she isn't wearing a name tag on her sweater. We ask her to put it on. She peels back her sweater to reveal her name tag on the t Shirt
    via u/Shall-Not-Pass
  • 24
    underneath. We ask her to put it on the outside where it's visible. She refuses, doesn't offer a reason. Just says no. Goodbye. Stupid rule. Stupid reason to be fired.
    via u/Shall-Not-Pass
  • 25
    Atl... During my first real dev job, the company I was working for tried to implement a bunch of things to improve efficiency and employee satisfaction. Two interesting programs they implemented were 'work from home' and agile development, along with the requisite bullpens (shared team areas). What this basically meant is that we only had to show up in
    via u/AtlantaPesto
  • 26
    the office for core hours (4 hours) 3 days a week, and the rest of time we could work in shared areas, restaurants, parks, home - you name it. Sometimes, if you couldn't be at core hours, you would just dial in. We were young and excited and dedicated, so the core team really got a lot of good work done with this model. About two weeks after we started, our scrum master
    via u/AtlantaPesto
  • 27
    casually mentioned 'Has anyone seen Phil?' Phil was a quiet guy, and he was still answering emails and IM, so it took us a while to agree that no-one had actually seen him in a long time. She called him from the speakerphone in the bull- pen, and as God is my witness, here is the call that took place: • Boss: Hey Phil! What's up?
    via u/AtlantaPesto
  • 28
    Phil: Hey Boss - not much, what's up with you? • Boss: Hey, we were just noticing we hadn't seen you much lately. You ever coming back in for core hours? ⚫ Phil: ...Probably not... • Boss: Oh... why is that? • Phil: Because I moved to Idaho. • Boss: ...But Phil, we're in DC?
    via u/AtlantaPesto
  • 29
    • Phil: I know. • Boss: Why didn't you tell us you wanted to move to Idaho? • Phil: Oh. Because I knew you wouldn't let me. EDIT: Oh snaps, I thank all of you for your sweet, sweet little up arrows. Many questions - let it be said that OP attempted to deliver:
    via u/AtlantaPesto
  • 30
    • Phil got fired. Fired as shit. Not for moving, but for the whole 'Because I knew you wouldn't let me' thing - management felt it was an integrity issue. • I agree, great work can be done remotely. I currently work remote. It takes focus, a good office space and integrity, in my opinion. I hit 2 of those most days.
    via u/AtlantaPesto
  • 31
    • Yes - i believe Agile, SAF and all its flavors can be done remotely and done well. It does take more overhead than when you can get everyone in a room together, but it makes sense for certain companies needing certain types of dev done. Some work is relatively niche and collocating a team would be prohibitively expensive.
    via u/AtlantaPesto
  • 32
    • Phil went on to live a happy life in Idaho. He got a great remote job, and proceeded to show up every day at the office just to mess with the universe. There. do you like. that, you fucking ?
    via u/AtlantaPesto
  • 33
    gar... Fresh out of college i worked in a call center for a mutual fund company. Job wasn't terribly hard, just placed trades all day and occasionally had to deal with a jerk here and there. An older guy who sat around the corner from me was kind of sad looking and hated being there. He would put customers on mute and
    via u/garythedog
  • 34
    curse under his breath from time to time. Well, one day he had an older lady call in to place a trade to cash and she wasn't very pleasant. He hit his mute button but the phone didn't mute, he proceeded to call her an old nasty bitch who will die alone until she interrupted him and said "excuse me?". To the old guy's surprise he asked her what she was talking about
    via u/garythedog
  • 35
    and said she was hearing things. She hung up and the call got escalated; his boss pulled the call and pulled him aside. He was told to just be honest and he wouldn't be fired. Instead of coming clean he kept denying it and the call was played back to
    via u/garythedog
  • 36
    him. Security walked him out right from the conference room. Ill never forget a Cesar salad sitting on his desk for the last 5 hours of the day. Rumor has it they put the salad in his box of belongings and mailed to his home address but i like to think its still sitting on that desk as a reminder.
    via u/garythedog

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