15+ Employees Who Got Fired on the Spot for Their Huge Mistakes: 'The CEO... got caught lying'

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
May 29, 2026 11:15 AM EDT

These workers made mistakes so large that they instantly paid the price for them.

Some workers get way too comfy at their jobs way too fast. They get hired, and there's that period where mistakes are okay, right? You're still learning, there will be misunderstandings. 

But after a while, they're firmly settled in their position, and they can't really be calling their errors "rookie mistakes" anymore. 

Now, many workers are diligent after this stage. But some of them get too comfortable. 

They start bending the rules until they're at the breaking point. I think a lot of workers just like to go against authority for no reason, and will find little ways to get back at their bosses. 

Years go by, and they're bending the rules beyond all recognition! So what happens next? Well… these employees could tell you all about it. 

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  • Model's depiction of a worker talking on the phone, working from her standing desk.
    via EFFYDESK

    Model's depiction of a worker talking on the phone, working from her standing desk. 

  • One curious person, going by the username National-Tourist6879, asked people to share their stories of workers who “ruined their entire career in the dumbest way possible." 

    Folks had a lot to say! It turns out that a few mistakes, timed just right, can have HR hovering over your desk holding banker's boxes in a matter of minutes. 

  • This worker burnt his bridges before starting a new gig

    gachunt Had a solid co-worker leave the org for another job offer. On his last day, he wrote a scathing goodbye email to everyone. A week later, the new company went bankrupt. He asked to come back, but he had burned that bridge big time with his email.
    via gachunt

  • Some folks just want to see what they can get away with...

    minuteman_d I used to work with some guys in the Oil & Gas industry. They were actually really great to work with, and generally fun. They made very good money (especially since most of them had no formal education past high school) and bought houses, cars, trucks, toys, etc...
    via minuteman_d
  • They got busted for falsifying expense reports. Like they would go to a restaurant, and buy gift cards for that restaurant, and then expense it and then pocket the money. I can't imagine that they each maybe netted less than $2- 3k on the "enterprise".
    via minuteman_d

    It's the petty little things that'll get you in the end! It must've felt good for them to pocket "free" gift cards, and honestly it's kind of a clever scheme. But they must've known that even getting caught doing that a single time would put an end to those "free" lobster dinners.

  • So, they went from being some of the top earners in the small-ish oil and gas tech company (that was a subsidiary of a very large company) to out on the street and probably branded a bit around the industry. All for like less than one week's worth of pay.
    via minuteman_d
  • Employees look at computer screen with irritation, while one coworker touches his forehead, as portrayed by models.
    via Getty Images

    Employees look at computer screen with irritation, while one coworker touches his forehead, as portrayed by models.

  • clueless_mommy Late to the party, but anyway: I work for a major retailer. Screw it, I work for Nike. One of our department managers went all in for the job. He was already a sneakerhead when he got hired, literally has a Swoosh (the Nike logo) tattooed ON
    via clueless_mommy
  • HIS NECK and quit his university degree when he was offered a promotion. He was promising, great feedback, well liked. Then he stole from the company. Stupid way, obvious. Was fired immediately, sued and is now unemployed, without a degree but has a criminal record.
    via clueless_mommy

  • This seems to be fairly common

    Rager_Doltrey A guy I worked with had been at the company for 17 years, got spot checked leaving work one day by security who checked the boot/trunk of his car, and it was jam packed with toilet rolls he'd taken from the store cupboard.
    via Rager_Doltrey

    If you're going to steal TP, why would you ever pilfer rolls from your job? Not endorsing this, but you could take them from literally anywhere else in your town. I bet it's not even about the rolls, I imagine it's more about the thrill of stealing and getting away with your little repeated thefts. It won't last forever! And now he's going to be known as the TP guy forever! 

  • Employee looking unhappily at another worker, as demonstrated by models.
    via Getty Images

    Employee looking unhappily at another worker, as demonstrated by models. 

  • This guy took things way too far when talking to his colleagues

    graytotoro My old coworker. He had talked leadership into making him a permanent hire and managed to get his way for everything. They never questioned his decisions even if they were blatantly wrong, never questioned how he spent his work hours, and he got away with treating the rest of the team like sh...
    via graytotoro
  • That is, until he threatened a coworker during a meeting with the new boss. Neither my colleague nor my new boss put up with this kind of nonsense and he was terminated the next day.
    via graytotoro

  • This is a real shame

    Better_Mango1992 I trained the hotter secretary to do what I do, then when I went on vacation and she filled my spot, they gave her my job. I'd hired her.
    via Better_Mango1992
  • Receptionist on the phone realizes she is training her replacement, as recreated by a model.
    via Vitaly Gariev

    Receptionist on the phone realizes she is training her replacement, as recreated by a model. 

  • RRW2020 I used to work for a Fortune 500 at one of their factory sites that was like 5 sq miles. Managers who had to travel from building to building got golf carts, the rest of us had to walk (TBF, they had to travel between buildings a h I of a lot).
    via RRW2020
  • A manager's golf cart disappeared for a few days, then re-appeared. It kept happening. He contacted security and they got him a chain and lock. The thief used bolt cutters. Then security installed a camera and had the manager park where the camera could see.
    via RRW2020
  • The guy who had repeatedly stolen the golf cart was months away from retiring. and got fired. He lost some of his pension. Like... why????? Why would you do this?????
    via RRW2020

    This makes absolutely no sense. He put everything on the line for a lil golf cart?? 

    I actually looked up the price for golf carts due to my own natural curiosity. At first I couldn't find any prices, which means they're gonna be expensive. And when I did find pricing, though, they ranged from about $2.4k to like $15.5k (if you want the 6-seater model, to bring all your buddies along for the ride). It's just not worth stealing when you could use your hard-earned retirement funds on that little splurge. 

  • Worker sleeps at his desk, as depicted by a model.
    via Vitaly Gariev

    Worker sleeps at his desk, as depicted by a model.

  • Bro said 50 MacBooks were damaged beyond repair... Sure, Jan

    rishaansaniellb An IT director at a previous company. He was leading a major audit of the company's hardware assets. During the audit, he decided to write off about fifty brand new MacBooks as "damaged beyond repair" and quietly loaded them into his SUV over a weekend.
    via rishaansaniellb
  • He then listed them on eBay. Using his official work email address for the PayPal account. And he shipped them using the company's FedEx account, using pre-printed labels from his office.
    via rishaansaniellb
  • Our finance department flagged the sudden spike in FedEx shipping costs on his department's card, checked the tracking numbers, and saw they were all going to residential addresses across the country. He was gone by Tuesday.
    via rishaansaniellb
  • jerrymendozaix A guy my dad worked with was the head of safety for a major manufacturing plant. High-paying role, tons of responsibility, and he had been there for over a decade. They had a massive safety audit coming up, and he was stressing out trying to get the facility in perfect shape.
    via jerrymendozaix
  • In the back of one of the warehouses, there was a large, unlabeled metal drum that had been sitting there for years. Nobody knew what was in it, but it definitely shouldn't have been there. Instead of calling a hazmat team to properly dispose of it (which was literally his entire job to coordinate), he decided he would just 'make
    via jerrymendozaix
  • it disappear' quickly so the auditors wouldn't see it. His brilliant plan? He rolled the drum out to the back parking lot, drilled a hole in the bottom of it, and let the contents drain directly into the storm drain.
    via jerrymendozaix
  • Well, that storm drain emptied directly into a local nature reserve's pond about a quarter-mile away. By the next morning, the pond had turned bright neon green and dozens of ducks were de d.
    via jerrymendozaix
  • The EPA got involved immediately. It took them less than 24 hours to trace the chemical trail back to the plant, and the facility's own security cameras showed him in high- definition drilling the hole and watching it drain.
    via jerrymendozaix
  • He didn't just destroy his career; he got slapped with massive federal fines and actually served prison time. All because he was too lazy to fill out a single page of hazmat paperwork.
    via jerrymendozaix

  • Sheesh

    aaronlouis500 there was a CEO who got caught lying about having an MBA on his resume after already running the company for years the degree didn't even matter for the job, that's what made it so baffling
    via aaronlouis500
  • Fakjbf I work at a pharmaceutical testing lab and my manager knew a guy who got fired because he falsified testing. results. He was supposed to be doing weight-loss testing which is literally just weighing a sample that has sat in storage for several months and seeing how much it has changed since it was put in. Absolutely de d
    via Fakjbf
  • simple and easy work and the guy instead just made up weights that were within spec and submitted it. The way he was caught is that he never requested the samples from sample management so at the end of the timepoint the manager noticed that the number of requests didn't match the number of tests.
    via Fakjbf
  • Eventually he realized that the day the weight-loss testing was done had one other set of tests being done but there was only one request for just enough samples for the other test. It was at that point they double checked and realized that the second analyst verification signature looked odd, so they asked the second analyst who said
    via Fakjbf
  • they never signed off on the results. Turns out the guy had forged the other analysts signature in the notebook. Not only was he fired but one of the mangers reached out to former colleagues of his who work at various other labs in the area so they knew who to avoid hiring.
    via Fakjbf

  • This is just hilarious

    lucilleperrybz A guy I worked with at a major logistics hub. We had serious security at the exit - metal detectors, bag checks, the works, specifically to stop people from stealing electronics. This guy thought he was a criminal mastermind. He started pocketing high-end smartphones, wrapping
    via lucilleperrybz
  • them in thick bubble wrap, and throwing them over the back fence during his break. His plan was to walk around the outside of the property after his shift and collect them. The only problem was the geography of the business park. The back fence of our facility shared a border with
    via lucilleperrybz
  • the secure yard of the county sheriff's department. He threw a package containing two brand new iPhones over the fence. It landed with a loud thud right on the hood of a K9 unit SUV. The deputy was actually sitting inside the car with his window rolled down, having a coffee. He literally watched the package fly
    via lucilleperrybz
  • over the fence and hit his own car. The deputy got out, looked up, and made direct eye contact with our genius, who was still standing on a stack of pallets looking over the fence to see where they landed.
    via lucilleperrybz
  • About ten minutes later, two deputies walked through our front lobby. We all watched him get marched out of the building in zip-ties. He didn't even get to finish his first week.
    via lucilleperrybz
  • Jmaverik1974 Uh, me. My first real job was working as a back end support company. At the time, our main program had us use our last name and first initial for BOTH our login and password. You literally were unable to change the password, so if you knew someone's name, it was
    via Jmaverik1974
  • pretty easy to log into their account. This was in the 90s, and the program was pretty bare bones and I guess no one saw the point in setting up personal passwords. And then one day the system administrator visited our department...
    via Jmaverik1974
  • Guess whose username and password was her last name and first initial? On a whim, I tried to login as her. Once I got into the system I decided to set myself up as an admin. In my defense, I had a ton of really good ideas about how to improve the system. And I set about fixing a bunch of things to make everyone's
    via Jmaverik1974
  • job easier. I was also about two weeks from being promoted to a supervisor. I would have gone from making 8 dollars an hour to 40k a year. The official reason for my termination was "hacking." Took me another ten years before I found a job making 40k.
    via Jmaverik1974
  • jappening I was the newly appointed GM of a small company. They poached me from a promising career elsewhere with an offer of twice my (then current) salary. Six months into the job, I presented a new fiscal budget to the owners. This was one of my responsibilities and I worked hard on it. The (four) owners
    via jappening
  • had owned the company for 8 years, and none of them had ever taken an income from it; just invested more and more into it. So I made a business plan which included a payout for them all, and retained a 4% EBITDA. Well, didn't I know they always make between 8-9% EBITDA? How could I present a budget with less.
    via jappening
  • than 8% profit? I had the last 8 years of finances in front of me. I explained that while they had been self-reporting an 8% bottom line, they had actually been rolling their liabilities into their assets, which gave them a false 8%.
    via jappening
  • In reality, their best year had been 2.4%. I had achieved the two most profitable quarters of the business since they owned it (12% on average), and had promised to pay them for the first time while nearly doubling what they had actually been making each year.
    via jappening
  • Two weeks later I was given my severance letter. They could no longer afford me.
    via jappening
  • PickleDigger93 My former manager. Used company money to buy some candies for his kids, that sounded the alarm in our accountants. They checked several of his invoices and suddenly they found the following thing:
    via PickleDigger93
  • When he bought tiles for the renovation of the toilet and bathroom in the office, he bought double the amount needed, so he could use it for free for his own toilet and bathroom at his own house.
    via PickleDigger93

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