15+ Employees who got fired for odd reasons: '[He] fired both me and my boss on the spot'

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Dec 17, 2025 11:00 AM EST

Getting fired from a job is rarely a pleasant experience for either the boss or employee, but sometimes it's a necessary step. 

In the good old US of A, bosses can easily fire most employees for almost any reason, no matter how silly the reason may be. If they want an employee gone, they can easily piece together an excuse to lay them off. Downsizing, restructuring, removing the role entirely… the list goes on. Not to mention that most employers don't bother giving out severance checks, either. Employees are just left to fend for themselves after months or years of having a reliable paycheck. 

These people got fired for some interesting reasons! Some stories make it obvious exactly why that worker got sent packing. But other people clearly just had bosses that had it out for them, and would give any excuse to get them to leave. For example, one worker was scolded for sitting down, even when there was no one else in the store. Their manager told them to stand in order to look professional… to which the worker retorted asking why that manager was sitting in their back office all day. Zing! Got him! And they also lost their job for that. Sometimes the joke is good enough to cost you a job, and hopefully that witty individual found something better soon after. 

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  • 01

    'Why did you get fired?'

    Woman with brown hair gestures in confusion, to her left a man in a suit holds up hand
    via steffen wienberg on Unsplash+

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

  • 02
    [deleted] For doing my job too quickly and sitting down the rest of the time. Gas station cashier 3rd shift. Me: "Why should I stand when I'm the only person in the store?" Manager: "It's more professional to stand than sit" Me: "then why do you sit in your office?"
    via u/[deleted]
  • 03
    stopbeingextra my manager kept losing my class schedule worked at a subway. i had class two days a week. several times he put me on those days anyway. i gave him multiple copies every time. owner took me off the schedule for "calling out too much"
    via u/stopbeingextra
  • 04
    when i showed the owner proof he said it was too late and they already hired someone else this was 12 years ago. im still mad
    via u/stopbeingextra
  • 05
    Stompboxer1 A business I went to long ago was hiring and I got the job. Right after I signed all the paperwork, the department manager comes in and asks who I am. I tell him I was just hired as a temp. Manger says he never authorized any hiring and fired both me and my boss on the spot. I did not work for this company at all and they fired me. :(
    via u/stopbeingextra
  • 06
    scoyne15 I was denied a raise by HR after consistently working 60-70 hours weeks, and my VP (who had supported and requested the raise for me) told me to stop putting in the extra time, work my 40, and spend that extra time applying to new jobs. Within a month, a meeting was called to "mutually part ways" because my work wasn't getting done.
    via u/scoyne15
  • 07
    I was gratified to learn that they had to hire two people to do my job after I left. Edit: Sucks to see how much this resonates with people who have been in a similar situation. I left this job back in 2015, thankfully. The VP is no longer there either, and good for him.
    via u/scoyne15
  • 08
    angel_and_devil_va I got fired once for putting in my 2 week notice. The only other time I've gotten fired was working for a trade company, during the first week. I was a supervisor, and there was a second supervisor on site. I got a call that my wife had been rushed to the hospital, which was literally less than a mile away. I asked the
    via u/angel_and_devil_va
  • 09
    other supervisor if I could go to attend to her, and he said "sure, no problem, I've got things here. Go." I returned to the job site later to find the boss there, and he let me go on the spot for leaving the team "without a supervisor". He knew what had happened, and still fired me. I won't lie, that one kind of pissed me off.
    via u/angel_and_devil_va
  • 10
    Electrical_Resource6 This isn't why I got fired, but this is why I didn't get a job... I was 16 and looking to work at a Dairy Queen as my first job. My mom drove me to the interview and I was super nervous. She looked me in the eye and said "Just be honest, and be yourself, and you'll do fine."
    via u/Electrical_Resource6
  • 11
    I walked into that interview and when he asked me "How long do you think you'll work here?" | responded "Until something better comes. along"....
    via u/Electrical_Resource6
  • 12
    HiddenHolding I talked my way into a job at a software company when they put a hiring notice in a local paper. I had no idea what the software did. I still don't. They hired me as a trainer and no one ever explained what the product was. I did a few weeks where I was trained on the software but literally none of it ever made sense to me. It was like they were speaking
    via u/HiddenHolding
  • 13
    gibberish. One day I showed up, a lady I had never seen before gave me a check, and walked me out to the parking lot. No one even ever said "you're fired" or anything. It's one of the strangest things that ever happened to me.
    via u/HiddenHolding
  • 14
    iridescentmoon_ I went to the Emergency room instead of work. Came back with an ER note and they said "We won't be needing that. Can you come with us?" I was 18 and it was my first full time job.
    via u/iridescentmoon_
  • 15
    Woman in blazer and white shirt gestures toward woman with blonde hair while sitting on white couch
    via A. C. For Unsplash+

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

  • 16
    ikyle117 I was a kid and just started at a local pizza place. I was let go couple weeks later because a pizza chef from Chicago had moved into the area and needed a job so it was a business decision that I totally understood. Week later, went to go get my last check and asked how he was doing, the girl up front was like "pizza chef from Chicago? The only new hire was the managers new gf".
    via u/ikyle117
  • 17
    TheSuperAlly I refused to come in 15-20 mins early unpaid for my shift. I was always 5-10 min early but they decided they wanted me there earlier. I carried on as normal as I'm not coming in if I'm not being paid. Turned up for a 12pm shift at
    via u/TheSuperAlly
  • 18
    11:49, no one would look at me when I arrived then was thrown in a meeting and fired for being "late". Was out the door before it even hit 12. It was the only time I've ever been fired.
    via u/TheSuperAlly
  • 19
    SL-Apparel I built a snow scorpion sculpture (I used ketchup for the red glowing eyes and everything) on a particularly miserable day at a ski resort. The guests enjoyed my sculpture very much, management weren't so happy.
    via u/SL-Apparel
  • 20
    Dracula_Batman I was 19 and working as a janitor at a large self storage facility, where most days were filled with sweeping and mopping endless hallways of flickering fluorescent light. And when someone went delinquent on their bill (after a 3 month grace period), I would be instructed to empty their unit and dump everything in the trash outside. Once or twice it was a person who died, but otherwise it was
    via u/Dracula_Batman
  • 21
    a pretty common to see a room full of absolute junk that someone got tired of paying for. Banged-up furniture, garbage bags of ratty clothing, stacks of old magazines, it was usually pretty hoarder- friendly stuff, and not that I'd want any of it but the policy was I had to throw it into the dumpster outside no matter what it was. One day I get notified to empty out a unit, so I grab the bin, cut the lock, fling open the gate.
    via u/Dracula_Batman
  • 22
    The room is full of huge cardboard boxes stacked to the ceiling. I open one up out of curiosity, and it's full of brand new, unopened Gundam models. The entire room is full of them, dozens of boxes with dozens of models in each, and I'm talking the $50-$100 ones I saw for sale at my local comics shop every week. The manager would check up on me once or twice a day, and that morning he walked up and I showed him all of the brand new merchandise and said there has to be a
    via u/Dracula_Batman
  • 23
    better system than trashing all of this. He said rules are rules, something about insurance I didn't understand, and told me to throw them all away. So I went and I backed up one of the complementary U-Haul style box trucks, picked a few models out for myself, and loaded it up the truck with the rest of it. On my lunch break I drove over to the Children's Resource Center that I'd volunteered at
    via u/Dracula_Batman
  • 24
    during high school, it's a place where any child (but usually poorer ones) would go after school for arts and crafts and activities to keep them busy until their parents got home. The people at the drop-off dock were so grateful, before I even left they were handing them out to some extremely excited kids. Drove back to the self storage place with enough time to eat a sandwich and smoke a cigarette before clocking back in.
    via u/Dracula_Batman
  • 25
    But that's not why I got fired. I got fired because the manager came to check on me that afternoon, and after awhile of looking around, found me sitting cross legged on the floor of the janitor closet with model parts spread all around me, happily assembling a sweet translucent Zaku model. I was so entranced I didn't even hear him come in, I just hear this long, drawn out, exasperated sigh. I look up and he just says "keys" and
    via u/Dracula_Batman
  • 26
    that was that. I spent the rest of the week assembling Zakus and Valkyries and lying to my parents about getting replaced with a Roomba.
    via u/Dracula_Batman
  • 27
    12inch3installments I got fired for submitting my time sheets on Monday at 8am when I got into work. By policy, they were to be in by noon on Saturday, but my Fridays ended in the field so I just did then on Monday mornings. My bosses didn't even look at them until noon on Tuesday so it had 0 impact on them. I drove home from being fired feeling relieved because of how unhappy I was at that job.
    via u/12inch3installments
  • 28
    theonlyblackredditor I gave my employee meal to my mother. That's literally it. I didn't like eating the food there so I had my mom bring me lunch and I just gave my employee meal to her. Apparently that was considered theft so I was fired. :/
    via u/theonlyblackredditor
  • 29
    SufficientWin8945 Worked in a DIY store, 10 minutes before my shift ended I moved a pallet cage of paint cans (slowly) to the warehouse and when I got in there one of the sides came off along with half of the paint cans which spilt all over, anyway there was about 2 minutes of my shift left, so I moved the pallet over the paint, covering it a bit and went home. It was all caught on CCTV
    via u/SufficientWin8945
  • 30
    [deleted] For getting lunch. I was 18, working at a mall kiosk with a "manager" title even though I managed nothing for something like $8/hour. Hours painted on the door, O support or other employees to relieve for a break. The owner showed up while I had locked up to go get a bite to eat. Fired on the spot.
    via u/SufficientWin8945
  • 31
    milanroman1 Because my job "was eliminated". This was code for "getting rid if you and hiring someone to replace you at half the salary." Their scheme was less than a stellar success because: The person they hired was an idiot
    via u/milanroman1
  • 32
    and could not do it, the customers got severely pissed, they gave me $15K severance if I promised not to sue them, I took their money and still sued them for age discrimination, and won.
    via u/milanroman1
  • 33
    Amanda BRecondwith It was 1973, working at Mickey -Ds. Redneck manager says "go get a haircut, then you can come back". I didn't go back. Ponytails rule.
    via u/AmandaBRecondwith
  • 34
    d I-doll Their official reason "I'm not happy doing my job" The actual reason: I wasn't happy doing other people's job on top of my own and they didn't like that I spoke up.
    via u/d***-doll

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