Reddit user I_Have_No_Name_00 asked the AskReddit Community: “HR people of Reddit, what’s the most NSFW/WTF reason someone got fired from your place of employment?” Though not many actual HR reps took to the replies (because I’m guessing they’re trained NOT to share things like this), plenty of people did share stories of ex-coworkers gone wild. Here’s what was revealed:
1.“A guy used to keep a container of orange juice in the break room fridge. Another coworker was constantly taking from it. Most of us had seen her do it and had told her to stop. She didn’t. He finally had enough, so he took the bottle (about half full) into the bathroom, peed into it, capped it back up, and put it back in the fridge. A couple of hours later, the commotion cleared the whole floor as we all rushed over to see what she was yelling about. By the time we got the real story, he had been fired, and she had been written up. She quit a few months later because the jokes never stopped.”
—u/druuuval
2.“They were clipping their toenails in the production room. I work in pharmaceuticals.”
—u/bukbukbuklao
3.“A guy was running a side business producing ‘adult’ calendars. He got caught because our system admins noticed he was using up a ridiculous amount of our bandwidth. He was downloading astronomical amounts of porn. I fired him on the spot and had him escorted from the building. Then, I instructed my secretary to clean out his desk and box up his belongings. She walked over to his cubicle, then returned to my office 30 seconds later and said, ‘Nope.'”
—u/GSyncNew
4.“A fellow was using his corporate card to live in hotels in three cities because he was simultaneously engaged to three different coworkers who lived in those cities.”
—u/Own-Particular-208
5.“A guy I worked with was fired because he worked three full-time jobs, and it turned out he was sleeping for six hours during his shift. This was on the night shift at a Home Depot. He used supplies from the store to build himself a platform above the rug-cutting machine and had a whole setup he slept in for almost a year until he was caught climbing in the machine on camera. We all thought he was bad at the job and wasn’t getting anything done. He is secretly my hero.”
—u/SolidZachs
6.“I had to fire a pet store employee who habitually ate dog treats. We spent weeks investigating and watching the cameras because it was so hard to believe.”
—u/NO_GOOD_AT_ART
7.“I had someone fired for trying to poison me. I learned about it because she drew pictures of herself doing it to me and people I know. There were other drawings of her stabbing me, ‘putting me to sleep forever,’ and robbing me. The kicker? She signed and dated every drawing. I’d known this woman for 20 years. This was completely out of nowhere.”
—u/JuliusSqueezerLXIX
8.“He attacked another employee in the breakroom because he took the last soda. He was very calm afterward and told us, ‘I understand I’m fired. I just want to go on record on why I had to choke them.’ We told him it wasn’t necessary and had him escorted out of the building.”
—u/Wookiess_get_Cookies
9.“My HR lady got fired for having an affair with someone within the company. They were using their company emails to write each other racy stuff.”
—u/sumnlikedat
10.“This guy would eat his lunch while sitting on the toilet in the men’s room. I guess enough people complained.”
—u/JumboDakotaSmoke
11.“The workers on the assembly line stopped working to have a twerk-off. Six people were fired for twerking for 20 minutes while a seventh judged the winner. They might have gotten away with it if they hadn’t moved directly in front of a security camera. They were surprised it was a fireable offense.”
—u/jammer2omega
12.“I used to work at a magazine publishing company. I was pretty close friends with the editor of one of our health magazines. She was really good at her job and a kind person. I was floored when I came to work one day to learn she was fired. It turns out that in the dark recesses of our magazine library, she and one of the graphic designers were having full-blown intercourse. What makes matters worse is she was fired a day after a bunch of us just returned from a weekend out of state for HER WEDDING to another man. She’s still married to that man and has a couple of kids now. I know he knows. I haven’t been in contact with them for many years, except when I see the occasional social media post. About six or seven of us in the office went to the wedding, and boy, did we feel very conflicted about it after we learned why she was fired.”
“I didn’t know the graphic designer (who was also fired) very well. He was a quiet guy who did his job. I rarely conversed with him. In terms of how they were discovered, as far as I know, she was talking to other coworkers about what she was doing on our work messaging platform (similar to Slack but not Slack). I couldn’t believe how foolish somebody could be to talk about something like that on a company channel! It’s like she wanted to be caught.”
—u/THGoodale
13.“Someone I know had one of her bosses come to her and put a $100 bill on her desk and ask to see her ‘large breasts’ that he had ‘admired over the years.’ They let the dude go. Instantly. No charges were filed, but my friend was shaken because this was a man she had almost considered fatherly over the years. WILD.”
—u/boltsofsaffron
14.“My buddy fired a gal who had worked there for 10+ years for drinking all the vanilla extract. She drank gallons of it for years. He was doing inventory (it was a popular breakfast place/bakery) and realized they went through about 500% more vanilla than they ever actually used, so he checked the cameras. He found her drinking it all day long.”
“He fired another couple of guys for a scam they had been running for years. Two friends, one worked days, and one worked nights. The day guy would clock himself in in the morning; instead of clocking himself out when he left, he’d clock his buddy in. Two hours later, his buddy would show up for work, clock the first guy out instead of clocking himself in, and then clock himself out at close. They each got an extra two hours a day, every day, for like five years.”
—u/GH057807
15.“A few HR employees got fired because they were hooking up in a wellness room meant for nursing mothers.”
–u/AcanthocephalaTop404
16.“The only cash register at a location was stuck shut. One employee took it upon himself to take a hammer and beat the crap out of the register until it opened and then took all the money out of it. All of this was on video, by the way. When confronted, his defense was, ‘I thought if I got it open, I could keep the money,’ despite no one saying anything remotely close to that.”
—u/Bravely_Default
17.“Another guy and I started as tellers at a credit union simultaneously. During the first week of in-branch training, the other guy started using the personal information of members he found attractive to find them on social media, where he’d try and flirt with them. I don’t think he had time to send anything really NSFW, but it was definitely a ‘WTF?’ situation.”
–u/DSleep
18.“My friend’s dad ran a radio station in the late ’80s. One of their ad salespeople got fired for farting into his chair cushion and then dragging the chair over to other employee’s areas and beating the cushion to disperse the fart.”
—u/AffectionateTreacle
19.“Someone where I worked had a manager fired for cheating on his wife with another employee. His wife also worked at the same company. They were caught together at work on company property.”
—u/VillagerEleven
20.“My friend told me about a guy at her job who got fired for constantly taking naps in the supply closet. They warned him, but he kept sneaking off for ‘breaks’ until they eventually let him go. Definitely one of those ‘seriously?’ moments.”
—u/Cathy_Love
21.And: “A supervisor drove an employee home, then stopped at a coffee shop where he got into a physical altercation with another direct report of his in the parking lot on company time, using the company vehicle.”
—u/popeyegui
What’s the wildest or most shocking reason one of your coworkers was fired? Tell us in the comments or share your story anonymously using this form.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
